I’ve been playing with a Mobile 6 device for a few hours now and for the love of all things good - why is this thing so damn annoying? The device in question is a high profile smartphone which would fairly represent Mobile 6 in a smartphone application.

Quick qwerks:

• Anti-aliased text looks good but why aren’t any icons anti-aliased. Jagged edges all over the place!
• Managing tasks and what applications are open is STILL annoying. Last time I used Windows on a portable device was with my HP iPaq, and then it had issues with managing its scarce memory and so does this device. Once you open it once, it stays open…
• Home screen is still cluttered with recent icons on top. I don’t know how to get rid of it, but I’ll tell you, if I just accessed something and exited out of it, I’m not looking to go there right after. Then again, flipping through open (anything you’ve ever opened) applications is convuluted so why not just throw them up on the home screen just in case you wanted to access a few of the open apps? If there’s an app that I’m going to be accessing all the time on the smartphone - I want a button for it or a permanent home on the main page. Thankfully, this device has plenty of dedicated buttons.
• I’m used to the trackball on BlackBerry devices, and having to navigate an interface that was clearly made to be interfaced via touchscreen is slow on a D-Pad.
• What the hell is Media Centre? Is it only on this device? It is a start menu icon which displays a new page for other already existing start menu icons such as “Pictures & Videos”, “Games” and “Media Player”.

Oy. Keep in mind that I am a RIM employee, and thus have come to learn the BlackBerry OS and smartphones very well. I’m sure many of these things will work themselves out once I get going on this device.