The M8 operating system

Hi

I've been following the development of the M8 for a while. The videos from cebit showed promise, as long as you're happy to carry a cheap iphone rip off in your pocket.. I was wondering more about the operating system itself rather than the GUI.

I've never used or heard of WINCE 6, will this run windows mobile 6 applications? Or have I missed the point somewhere?

WinCE is the basis for Windows Mobile. I think with a SDK at least some of the Windows Mobile Applications can run on the WinCE core. However, Meizu will use a different, self developed UI, so maybe that won't work. WinCE is the basis of several PMPs, many navigation systems etc.

nice info

2008-3-7 3:54:00

恩,m8上市之后也会开放整个m8的sdk
yes, after selling in market we will release whole set of sdk for m8

sounds interesting. the more open a system is, the more popular it is, the better quality apps i can put on the device, the more appealign it is to me. I think meizu should dump the iphone clone idea and try to make something inbetween the iphone and the new sony xperia x1.

Originally Posted by ipub

Hi

I've been following the development of the M8 for a while. The videos from cebit showed promise, as long as you're happy to carry a cheap iphone rip off in your pocket.. I was wondering more about the operating system itself rather than the GUI.

I've never used or heard of WINCE 6, will this run windows mobile 6 applications? Or have I missed the point somewhere?

I don't think the cebit video showed the actual GUI. It just showed pics of what it will look like, pretty much just click on phone and it showed a picture of the phone dialer which did nothing, same with the main menu and music player, just photoshoped pictures not the actual thing.

Skinny, try looking at the prototype's video
WinCE is (I think) the development platform the Pocket and Mobile windows version were given out.
Windows Mobile 6 (and 6.1) builds on WinCE 5.

I think that existing applications may run on the M8, the only thing that may make things not run is the screen resolution being much higher than that of the average PDA. Other than that, the M8's platform programatically shouldn't be much different from an average PDA.

all sounds a bit too much in theory to me! does anybody know of any phones running this CE software i can test on ?

You can try these for example:
Coming soon: Windows Mobile 6 phones - infoSync World
Google is your friend! It loves you! You should return the love

ah why ask google when your immense wealth of knowledge is at my fingertips
that said, why use google when theres forums such as these? are you saying we should close meizume.com ? ;P

Originally Posted by ipub

all sounds a bit too much in theory to me! does anybody know of any phones running this CE software i can test on ?

CE is just the basis. Meizu builds their own interface around it. So what works on one CE based device doesn't have to run on another. CE is to Windows Mobile what DOS was to Windows up to Me. Just the basis. There are many different interfaces running on top of that, including Windows Mobile.

Windows CE - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Windows CE is a modular/componentized operating system that serves as the foundation of several classes of devices. Some of these modules provide subsets of other components' features (e.g. varying levels of windowing support; Webserver Technotop Internetdiensten vs COM), others which are mutually exclusive (Webserver Technotop Internetdiensten or Webserver Technotop Internetdiensten font support), and others which add additional features to another component. One can buy a kit (the Platform Builder) which contains all these components and the tools with which to develop a custom platform.

Pocket PC and Windows Mobile is a Microsoft-defined custom platform for general PDA use, and consists of a Microsoft-defined set of minimum profiles (Professional Edition, Premium Edition) of software and hardware that is supported. The rules for manufacturing a Pocket PC device are stricter than those for producing a custom Windows CE-based platform. The defining characteristics of the Pocket PC are the digitizer as the primary Human Interface Device and its extremely portable size.

About The Windows Ce 6.0:

Windows Embedded CE 6.0 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Windows mobile 7 Will Be Based On Windows Ce 6.0

Sorry, Kadajavi, I have to disagree with you.
Windows CE _IS_ indeed the core of the operating systems. And Windows Mobile builds on that to have a custom user interface etc etc, however that's just kind of applications running on the OS itself. WinCE is not anything like DOS was to Win9x.
It can be seen as a development platform kind of. If I'd wish to create a program for any Windows Mobile device, I would download the Microsoft Platform SDK. In it are the functions and such that may be used on a Windows, and the WinCE functions. Creating an application using those standard functions will run on any operating system based on that WinCE version or any newer one. Like I said, the problem here can easily be that most other pocket devices have a much smaller screen, and programs designed on them may just be incompatible because of the changed hardware.
Also, the Windows Mobile is partly open source, so Meizu is able to change very much of the OS. They could probably make changes so running certain programs wouldn't be possible...
I'm not a WinCE expert tho, so I might have said bull-whistle-, that's my view based on my current knowledge tho

I would say that DOS was the core operating system for Windows 1.0 up to Me, except for NT, 2000, XP and Vista of course. Of course, there was a lot of stuff built on top of DOS, and at least from 95 onwards Windows gained more and more control.

As far as I know, not every CE has all the libraries required to run Windows Mobile programs. That is the problem. But yeah, I'm no expert either.

Meizu should have had realized that they didn't have the know-how and resources to develop in a short term a good and efficient OS and GUI to match the capabilities of their hardware, and capable of holding up against bigger names in the industry. At least without copying something already proven to be successful.

Jumping into to the smartphone business is a huge jump for a company like Meizu. Apple succeced because they are bigger, with strong technological, financial and corporate connections. They have huge design and interface knowledge, huge fan base, an OS developed in-house, AT&T behind their backs, and so on...

Meizu should have focused more on developing the hardware, and used an open strategy concerning the OS.

With an open strategy while developing theirOS/UI, they could have harnessed the huge power in the attention the M8 has received.
All these mock-ups could have some real use either than just create speculation around the web.

With open specifications and documentation, and some kind of open source model concerning their OS, Meizu would surely have some help from the public in getting a better UI ready for their hardware.
Better feedback, more testing, more concepts and ideas coming in...the only hard thing to do would be to manage these resources and put them to good use.

And when other mobiel OS solutions like OpenMoko and Android, became available, porting them to Meizu hardware would have been easier and the value of their product, with their competitive hardware, would become huge.

Just my 2cents.