Now apparently October 6 is the official launch date of Windows Mobile 6.5.
(Source: http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsphone/archive/2009/09/01/windows-phones-are-coming-on-october-6th.aspx )

What they mean is of course “from October 6 there will be devices running 6.5 available to spend money on”. WM 6.5 itself RTMed months ago. You can download emulator images and everything. But an emulator can’t beat an actual device in your hands running new goodness

HTC launched “Touch2” as the first device they will release with WM 6.5 (http://www.htc.com/www/product/touch2/overview.html) – not that the specs impress me, but it’s probably nice enough for some. They’ve also previously stated that a few of the current devices running WM 6.1 will be provided with an upgrade.

Last week I played with an upcoming device for a couple of days, (not the Touch2 mentioned above), and today I upgraded one of my existing devices to an RC build of 6.5. (No, I have not visited xda-developers.)

The “first” thing I check on a new device is the build number of the OS – but then I admit to having an unhealthy interest in details that don’t matter for most other people. The emulator images seem to be running 5.2.21234, and this one’s running 5.2.21841. Probably not a huge difference, but it should at least include some bug fixes and tweaks.

I haven’t tested every function on it yet. The touch screen feels more “iPhoneish” which is a good thing. Outlook looks better, Internet Explorer works better. I set it up to sync with a plain Exchange 2007 server, but I have heard rumors it might work with Exchange 2010 features like SMS sync. You know I’ll be testing that out soon

I haven’t found any ground-breaking new features yet though, but then I didn’t expect to either. (Well, ok, there’s Facebook included as an in-ROM app, but that hardly gets me excited as I’m not even on Facebook.) It’s got the Domain Enroll bit for SCMDM, but I haven’t tested that yet either.

In other news – I bought a new gfx card today that included a voucher for downloading Batman: Arkham Asylum come September 18. If the game has the feel the demo did I don’t know how much time I’ll be able to spend without a cape on for the weeks following release