I’m sure there are other countries that either have, or are soon to get the free WM6.5 upgrade but seeing as my own device is a stock, unbranded, Dutch B7610 (known as Omnia Qwerty in Holland) it’s my cue to download and upgrade.

For Dutch customers only (bricking your device is a distinct possibility if you try this with a branded or hacked device) here’s the link for the upgrade manual and upgrade software. Make sure you have plenty of battery in your PC and phone before you upgrade. Unfortauntely, this only works on Windows desktop OS. XP recommended. Linux and Mac users are out of luck.

http://software.mbzrsolutions.nl/omniaupgrade.html

Again, don’t try this unless you have a stock, unbranded phone from Holland.

I’ve downloaded the recommended version of ‘New PC Studio’ , the upgrade has been detected and I’m upgrading now.

Check back for updates.

19:53. Upgrade worked OK. Now switching from Dutch to English…I noted that the original Samsung three-screen start menu is now gone. It uses the default WM6.5 start menu now.

20:06. Switched to English OK.  Confirmed that video recording is now 720×480. A nice upgrade!

20:25. Email program improved. Touch scrolling on directories and individual emails.

20:26. I prefer the Windows start menu to the old Samsung one. Its quicker.

20:30. Cant find a way to reduce font size for email yet. Seems that the WM6.5 settings are well hidden buy the Samsung settings.

20:35. I’m stunned at how little has changed between WM6.1 and 6.5 in general.

20:35. Lock screen uses default windows 6.5 lock. Quicker than Samsung.

20:57. Device completely locked (solid) after using the lock button. Soft-reset needed.

21:00Rearranging items on the start screen takes forever. You have to move them to the top and then shuffle everything else up until you get it to the rigth position. This can’t be right.

21:01 Nothing seems to be faster or slower in general.

21:05 The podcast directory is still terribly limited and some podcasts found by search arent accepted as valid podcasts. Acast on Android is a million times better than this.

OK. Stopping testing for a while. In summary, it’s a bit of an anti-climax. Nice to have the new video recording resolution and a better email UI but clearly WM6.5 is mainly a marketing trick.

I’ll start my full review now. Should be up in about a week as I have a few other devices to review for Carrypad and UMPCPortal here.

Thanks Raposa, for the tip.