Tomorrow is the day when Windows Mobile 6.5 is expected to hit the ground running officially. It is expected that upgradeable devices will receive free upgrades from the older version 6.1 of the OS.

At this time, I am not sure whether or not the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 will receive an official upgrade. However, I have had the proviledge of running WinMo 6.5 on my X1 via custom ROMs made available by various developers. Besides finger-friendly icons, it does not offer much more than what currently obtains on WinMo 6.1.

Other new features that 6.5 offers include My Phone (data synchronisation) and the Windows Marketplace (an application that lets you purchase compatible apps for your device).

Do you own a Windows Mobile smartphone? Is it eligible for an upgrade? Do you have any expectations for Windows Mobile 6.5?

Ever since I was introduced to flashing custom ROMs on Windows Mobile by Brym ( see his articles, My Experience with Flashing ROMs, and Windows Mobile 6.5 ROMs Everywhere), I have flashed at least 13 different ROms on my X1.

At first, I was fascinated with the prospects of having my version 6.1 device updated to version 6.5, so I played with version 6.5 ROMs from the beginning. However, it did not take me long to find out that as good as some of them are, they were not so stable.

My X1 is primarilly a worktool, and fairly frequent crashes and freezes were out of the question for me. I also noticed that video recordings on almost all 6.5 ROMs I tried out was not as good as on the stock ROM.

The result was that I began to hunt for the most stable custom ROMs, and found that version 6.1 ROMs were what I should be exploring. Having tried a couple of them on the recommendation of the active community at the XDA Developers forum, I have found that the most stable, and the one I have come to keep is the version 6.1 ROM by Smaberg, Touch X 10.1 ULTIMATE X-TREME “FINAL”.

Video recording works well. It has TouchFlo 3D built-in, touch friendly menus, good user interface performance, and fine reception. While it does not have some of the extra bells and whistles of the version 6.5 ROMs, it works very well and keeps me happy.

If you own an X1, you cannot go wrong with Touch X 10.1. Screenshots below.

Battery life on a smartphone is important to me. Afterall, the idea behind mobility is that one should be able to use his or her device out and about without it dying out in a short time.

Windows Mobile phones have not generally had a good reputation with respect to battery life. I have used a few, and all of them ran out of juice quickly. In comparison, my Symbian devices over the years (including my most recent, the E75) have performed excellently with regards to battery life. I just never really had to worry about carrying a charger about with those.

One of the 10 Gripes I had with the T-mobile G1 was battery life as well. The G1 simply had the worst battery life on any smartphone I had used in years. I carried the charger with me to the office, to church, when visiting my parents, and all the way back home.

I have had the Xperia X1 with me for a week now, and I must say that it has the best battery life of any Windows Mobile phone I have ever used. I haven’t had to worry about carrying a charger around, and even after a full day’s use, there’s plenty of juice left on the phone.

I have the email client connecting to my mail server every 30 minutes, I play music and video files for a few minutes daily, among other things, and the X1 has been impressive all through. Add to that the fact that it runs the Touch Flo 3D user interface panel and has been tweaked to improve performance using 3rd party apps (which should increase power consumption some), and you can perhaps understand why I am really impressed.

With the G1, going to bed with a fully-charged battery meant that I would have to charge it again before leaving home the next morning. With the X1, going to bed means the battery charge is usually hovering between 97 and 99% when I get up in the morning.

Believe me when I say that it is a sigh of relief I breathed after watching the power indicator for the first few days and found out that there was no need to watch it so closely. Deliverance!

Here’s hoping to see more WinMo devices that stand out with respect to battery life – especially those upcoming devices from Samsung.

PS: Which manufacturer is going to deliver an Android-based device with good battery life as well? Word on the street is that even the spectacular-looking HTC Hero performs badly in this area.