Microsoft today confirmed that the Windows Mobile 6.5.3 release launching first with the Sony Ericsson Aspen greatly improves the platform's support for touchscreens. In addition to making buttons more touch-friendly, it adds support for capacitive touch of the sort seen in Android and the iPhone, making it much more responsive. Hooks have also been put in place for multi-touch, though this would still need phone builders to have an actual solution.
Most of the other changes center almost exclusively around touch and include a more consistent touch UI throughout the whole OS, such as the absence of tabs in many areas. Legacy apps even have a magnifier to reach buttons that were designed for a stylus, Microsoft says. Internet Explorer has been given smoother transitions in touch gestures as well as an overall speedup.
The improvements almost uniformly confirm the suspected nature of 6.5.3, which is to better position Windows Mobile as a competitor to hardware from Apple and Google's partners until the launch of Windows Phone 7 by end of the year.
The aging Microsoft OS has only supported imprecise resistive touch and in many cases has required a stylus in most areas. Only one Windows Mobile phone currently supports capacitive touch, the HTC HD2, and does so through extensive changes to the user interface and drivers that render Windows Mobile almost unrecognizable.
Source: electronista
Efficiently following to the software released by different producers' updates our recourse makes easier your work. As usual, we are glad to get you know a list of drivers, firmwares, BIOSes, benchmarks, flash, tweaking and information utilities for the passing week.
All updates' versions are in one list, classified on the equipment type for better perception the information.
Macs are often the black sheep in the many enterprise environments which have been dominated by Windows for nearly two decades, but the growing consumerization of IT is slowly changing that perception. Though Macs often have a higher up-front price than many business-class PCs, Macs are usually believed to have a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) due to lower support costs. A recent survey of IT professionals in large enterprise environments that have a mix of Macs and PCs overwhelmingly agree that Macs cost less than PCs to support.
The number of apps in the Android Market has almost doubled in just three months, Google confirmed today in an update. Where it had officially reached 16,000 apps by mid-December, the search company now says the official marker has jumped to 30,000. Its figure includes both free and paid apps, although it wouldn't tell MobileCrunch what the ratio might be.
Two steps forward, one step back. That seems to be an emerging trend for Microsoft's upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series platform. The snazzy user interface, support for the XNA Framework/Silverlight/Adobe Flash 10.1, Windows Phone Marketplace, and plentiful device manufacturers to choose from are certainly pleasing to potential buyers. However, we're starting to learn a little bit more about the platform at MIX10 and it isn't all rosy.
There were speculations about the hardware requirements of Windows Phone 7, which phones will get the upgrade and now at the MIX10 Microsoft finally gave answers to those nagging questions.

Intel Management Engine Interface Driver v.6.0.40.1215
Intel Rapid Storage Technology v.9.6.0.1014
JMicron JMB38x Driver v.1.00.40.01
JMicron JMC25x/JMC26x Driver v.5.0.17.1/6.0.17.1
Intel Turbo Boost Driver v.1.1.1.1007
Synaptics Touchpad Driver v.15.0.2.0
FTDI VCP Driver v.2.06
Siemens DCA-540 Driver v.0.71
FTDI RS232 Driver v.1.12.25
Windows 7 KB978251
Windows Vista/Server 2008 64-bit KB978251
Windows Vista/Server 2008 KB978251
Windows XP/2003 Server 64-bit KB978251
Windows Server 2003 (rus) KB978251
Windows Server 2003 (eng) KB978251
Windows XP (rus) KB978251
Windows XP (eng) KB978251
Windows 2000 SP4 (rus) KB978251

