Windows Mobile 6.5 Launch Spurs Extra FeaturesWindows Mobile 6.5 Launch Spurs Extra Features

Yesterday was the big launch for Windows Mobile 6.5 and first and foremost on people's minds are about the devices, and there will be plenty of WinMo 6.5 devices out soon. Some are out already. Beyond that though are the extras that are launching concurrently with WinMo 6.5. The two biggest are the My Phone backup service and Windows Marketplace for Mobile. Read on to see what is new.My Phone is a service that automatically backs up your contacts, appointments, text messages, photos, some of your documents, video and music. You can access all of this data on your PC from the My Phone web site. That is one seriously ugly URL, but you can also access it from myphone.microsoft.com which can be handy if you need to access your data at a PC other than your own.

Many WinMo users are already familiar with this service. Microsoft launched it earlier this year at Mobile World Congress in a limited beta that has been expanding throughout the year. Now it is fully launched and works with all WinMo 6.0, 6.1 and 6.5 devices. What is new? First is the photo sharing feature. Just set up the social network of your choice with My Phone and from My Phone, select Share from the menu and select the picture you want to share. It seems the My Phone installer has also added the "Share" menu item to the WinMo Photos app, so you can share from there without launching My Phone. Unfortunately, it seems the photo is just posted. I didn't see the opportunity to add descriptive text to it. Document sync still only includes a limited number of file types. Office files are synced, as well as text, PDF, ZIP and CAB files. Third party data files from other apps you have installed are not synced however. Browser favorites for Internet Explorer are now backed up. Your total storage is limited to 200MB.

All of the above features are free. Microsoft has also added some premium services. Right now the premium services are free until November 30, 2009. I just activated mine to play with it and it is good for 7 days. After that, it will cost $4.99 to activate a 7 day access package. That is pretty reasonable. You only pay when you need it, so if you never do, there is no need to bother subscribing to the service, but if you do, it is fairly priced.

Microsoft application store, Windows Marketplace for Mobile, also launched. As I mentioned a few days ago, this is only for Windows Mobile 6.5 today but in a few months, hopefully by the end of the year, a client for WinMo 6.0 and 6.1 will be available. There are currently 246 apps in the catalog, which is pretty good for their first day, and roughly 400% what the Palm Pre has nearly four months after its launch.