Windows CE is an embedded operating system designed to run on small memory and CPU contrained devices. The OS is highly customizable. An OEM (original equipment manufacturer) can choose which bits to add and which bits to take away.
Some ISV's (independent software vendors) build their own Windows CE using a tool called Platform Builder to provision to a generic Windows CE device. Doing this allows great control over how the device will operate. This is known as Windows CE Embedded.
Pocket PC 2000 or PPC (Windows CE 3.0) was the first Pocket PC which didn't contain any GSM or radio. These are the devices you can still buy today except they are now called Windows Mobile Classic and most now are based on Windows CE 5.0. These devices were initally released with a 320x240 QVGA screen or 92DPI. So we mentioned Pocket PC is a Windows CE device.
Pocket PC/Windows Mobile devices have a different shell and a whole bunch of additional Win32 APIs and applications not seen on generic WinCE. So fundementally WinMo is a WinCE but a greatly customized version of it. The OEMs/carriers decide how the WinMo will be built, even down to what APIs are available to appliation developers and the security policy employed.
First released in 2001. The Smartphone followed the PPC that added GSM support but unlike the PPC, it didn't have a touch screen and still doesn't today. Today the Smartphone is known as the Windows Mobile Standard edition. It's worth noting that the smartphone has a much smaller screen than the Pocket PC which at the time was 176x220 QVGA - which by and large hasn't really changed much. Hi-resolution smartphone devices are rare unlike its bigger brother PPC.
First released in 2002 (based on CE 4.1) which included GSM support with 2.5G (GPRS). Eassentially this was very similar to the Pocket PC except for radio. At the time there were very few of these devices around. Today it's hard to by a regular PPC (Windows Mobile Standard) device.
Released in 2003 and based on CE 4.2. Contained many shell extensions - a whole UI overhaul and also the .NET Compact Framework v1.0 included in ROM which was a major benefit for managed developers for lots of reasons, the main one being it was able to write a managed app to load from a flash card on a cold boot (hard reset). Notice the naming change. This was when "Windows Mobile" replaced Pocket PC. But just to confuse the matter, the Smartphone was kept.
Released in 2004, but it wasn't until 2005 when Windows Mobile 5.0 devices became available from carriers and OEMs. WM 5.0 release was also when the naming changed to the following:
- Windows Mobile Classic (touch) would become - Pocket PC
- Windows Mobile Standard (non-touch) would become - Smartphone
- Windows Mobile Profesional (touch) would become - Pocket PC Phone Edition/Windows Mobile 2003
This was a major release for Microsoft from a platform perspective and developer story perspective. This was when Visual Studio 2005 with the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 was released which contained many many enhancements. Some of the great features from a platform perspective were an intermediate GPS driver which allowed developers to code against an API to get GPS data. Previously developers had to write very low level code to parse NMEA sentenses from a serial port (bluetooth or infrared) which was painful. In addition only one application could open the port and read data at anyone time.
Previous to WM5.0 there was no support for an embedded GPS chipset. Another cool feature was a standard Microsoft stack for communicating with the devices camera. Previously you had to code against the OEM's SDK which changed from device to device. A new flash file system was employed so files didn't exist in RAM taking up valuable memory so enabling a persistent store for all files. Some of the later devices included the .NET CF 2.0. Of course support for C# 2.0 was a massive benefit for the managed developer. The new security model was also introduced in this released - a requirement from the carriers which has caused major pain for ISV's and developers. This is not going away, sadly.
Windows Mobile 6.0 was released in 2007 and 6.1 in 2008. In fact I was in Redmond when 6.1 was released in April. Many enhancements and as more and more devices are released the uptake of VGA screens (initially supported from WM5.0) are becoming more common. Now also support for WVGA screens (640x800) is becoming popular - the new X1 from Sony and the HTC Touch Pro both support these displays. It is also worth mentioning here that WM6.1 is still based on Windows CE 5.0. It's simply shell extensions that have been added. Mainly the look and feel among other things. One thing is for sure, the performance is greatly improved over WM5.0.
See here for the Windows Mobile 5.0/6.0/6.1 SKU matrix: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/en-us/meet/version-compare.mspx
Although this post has been primarilly about Microsoft device development, in a future post I will talk about other platforms and languages/developer tools such as the iPhone, the Google Android and the Symbian OS.
4 comments:
What about Palm Size PC ? Microsoft tried to use Palm PC but sued by Palm Inc, so they settle for Palm Size PC.
is re-compile is needed from windows mobile 5.0 to windows mobile 6.0 ?
@Harish:
No re-compile is required going from a managed WM5.0 to a managed WM 6.0 device.
But nw thing to be careful about is where native calls have been used. Ensure the native calls used in WM5 are supported in WM6.
Simon.
@Anon:
I know nothing about this. Sorry.
Simon.
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