Just like everyone else, I have been pining for something new in Windows Mobile, anything new! Windows 6.1 is certainly quite old and at this point 6.5 is a facelift that didn’t quite work out. Actually, a ‘facelift’ is a perfect analogy for explaining what 6.5 is to 6.1, the only difference being that people are not shy about pointing out how obvious it is.

Windows Phone 7 Series (that name cries for a comma!) certainly looks fantastic and I can’t wait to get my hands on it! It is new and different – if you haven’t seen Zune HD – and is a great move by Microsoft to get back into the fight. It’s a UI that addresses the uniqueness of using a phone rather than previous iteration’s insistence on digging a PC-in-your-phone trench. I’m all for WP7S and feel like I can brag about Windows Mobile/Phone all over again.

Despite all this euphoria I still feel like I’ll miss Windows Mobile 6.x. There are a TON of applications available for it, a huge number of designs to cater to your phone preferences and the ability to change the look and feel in many ways.

Windows Phone 7 Series will not have much customizing, at least not anything that’s been announced yet. The user experience will be basically the same across all manufacturers and devices. I am not sure how much I am going to like that. Maybe I won’t mind at all because the UI will just be that good. Perhaps changing backgrounds twice a day will keep me interested. Sigh, I just am not sure.

With Windows Mobile 6.x you can use the default start page, third-party UI’s such as my favourite, SPB Mobile Shell or the UI skin that comes from manufacturers such as HTC’s Sense UI or LG’s S-Class UI. These can drastically change the look and feel of Windows Mobile since they can go fairly deep into the OS itself. I love having this kind of flexibility and it’s the reason I keep going back to Windows Mobile.

Perhaps I’ll need to start a support group (no, not technical support) to help us hangers-on with the transition away from our blankies…er, Windows Mobile.

One thing is for sure, prices for the Starter Edition phones will probably be relatively low, and a bunch of used units will flood eBay. It should be a hay-day for those of us that use our money on mundane things like paying bills, feeding our kids, heating the house…

The HTC Touch2 is a relatively small Windows Phone that will indeed ship with Windows Mobile 6.5 onboard. It is meant to be a simple and affordable (I’m assuming here) device with fairly generic features. Those features include a 528MHz processor, 512MB ROM, 256MB RAM and a 3.2 megapixel camera.

The screen is a 2.8 inch touchscreen but is only QVGA. I guess that’s not surprising but compared to so many other devices it is a rather anemic resolution. I enjoyed using my HTC Touch (first gen) and was fine with the screen but now that I have been using the Touch Pro (VGA screen) it would be hard to go back to QVGA.

One of the nice things announced with this device is that it’s browser, an IE 6 variant that comes with Windows Mobile 6.5, will support flash. That should make for a decent browsing experience.

The HTC Touch2 seems like it will be targeted to the budget-conscious or first time Windows Mobile users. It looks nice, if fairly uninspiring and will probably be a nice low end smartphone.

You can read HTC’s press release here.