The sometimes-believable, sometimes-not fellows over at
DigiTimes are reporting today that Windows Mobile codename "Maldives" is going to break out as version 6.6 (a name we'd
previously heard associated with version 7) with native support for capacitive touchscreens next month -- a launch window that would line up nicely with Mobile World Congress, where
6.5 was announced a year prior. HTC's
HD2 has already proven that it's possible to cleanly support capacitive touch on a 6.x-based device, so it's reasonable to think that this is legit -- but what we don't yet know is how this dovetails with
6.5.3, whether they're the same thing, and if Microsoft is doing this simply to buy itself a few precious extra months to bake
WinMo 7 to a crispy, golden brown perfection. We'd already heard before that 6.x and 7 will
have an opportunity to coexist in the marketplace, so it's entirely possible that 6.6 is the version that'll carry that torch on the 6.x side of things -- but if this gets announced alone without a mention of
Robbie's ground-up rewrite at MWC, we'd wager there'll be riots in Barcelona.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/14/windows-mobile-6-6-aka-not-windows-mobile-7-set-for-february/
