Sure, I was a little dubious at first that Microsoft would be announcing Windows Mobile 6 earlier than expected. Perhaps part of it was a "French publication" breaking the embargo early that led them to just go ahead and tell everybody to start talking about it. In any case, the internet is all abuzz over it today instead of the February 12th official launch date.

Read on for a massive round-up of reviews, screen shots, and all the WM6 Links you can shake a stick at.

Update: Here's Engadget's photo gallery of WM6 Pro

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According to Engadget, Microsoft has announced Windows Mobile 6 (I'd pegged that announcement for the 3GSM conference next week). Perhaps they just announced it to Engadget, though, as I'm having a tough time just this second finding any corroboration.

Well, there is this article at InfoWorld which may back up the announcement claim - given that it mentions some of the same features that are listed in the Engadget post. On the other hand, the InfoWorld liberally quotes Rob Enderle - and you Mac fans know that's probably not a good sign.

Ok, I'll quit being grumpy. Windows Moblie 6 (aka Crossbow) does look like it has a few nice incremental upgrades - like full office in the smartphone version and HTML rendering in emails (and a 'calendar ribbon' that might actually keep from stabbing myself in the eye when I try to find an appointment). I'll we wanting it as soon as I can get it.

Microsoft's finally ready to take the wraps off Windows Mobile 6, the long-awaited successor to Windows Mobile 5 (what else?) that's been baking in the oven for a while now as "Crossbow." The platform formerly known as Pocket PC Phone Edition has become Windows Mobile 6 "Professional," while its more pocketable little brother, the Smartphone, has become "Standard" and plain ol' Pocket PCs are "Classic."

Read: Windows Mobile 6 announced - Engadget Mobile

Microsoft is apparently fond of releasing multiple editions of the same OS with similar names (witness the multiple versions of Vista that just came out). So it's no surprise to see that Crossbow will be continuing that trend. Hopefully, though, these new names will be a little easier for folks to parse. "Professional for PPC-Smartphones, "Standard" for non-touchscreen-smartphones, and "Classic" (aka, why the heck aren't you using a smartphone?) for standard PDA-PPCs.

Crossbow, however, aims to fix this. Crossbow is Windows Mobile 6, and instead of the confusing naming scheme above, Microsoft has apparently decided to change to a more familiar sounding format.

Read: CrunchGear » Blog Archive » Microsoft Renames Windows Mobile 6 to Standard, Professional, Classic

Looks like leakers giving themselves nicknames is all the rage now. Neowin's new friend is "betacollector", who has posted a healthy dose of new Crossbow screenshots to this forum thread.

Those of you holding out for something more impressive than a re-skinning and general tweaks should probably stop now - we've known for awhile now that there's nothing hugely new in Crossbow. At least they added the screen we see on the right here - "Enable the "X" button to end running programs." On paper, letting the OS handle memory and multitasking without the user's interaction may have been a great idea, but the number of us who've gone to great lengths to just easily quit programs has been proof enough that it didn't work in WM5. Good job with this dialog, Microsoft. Thanks.

Testers of Windows Mobile Codenamed Crossbow (or Windows Mobile 6.0) have leaked at least 2 versions of the pre-release online, along with a good number of screenshots. According to our source betacollector the pre-release is incomplete, missing a few functions but working fine.

Read: Neowin.net - Windows Mobile Crossbow (WM6) Leaked

Here's another leak from Engadget, another CDMA phone for Verizon, this time from Samsung. That little directional pad down in the lower-left looks interesting, seems like a good solution for reducing the overall height of the device. Add the sliding QWERTY keyboard (and the next-gen WM OS) and it looks like a winner. Samsung

[...] * taking on a decidedly different appearance from its GSM cousin by pushing the keypad to the right and the directional pad to the left. It looks like Verizon is all lined up to get this bad boy come Q2 of next year, packing a little next-gen Windows Mobile action in the process*

Read: Verizon's Samsung i760 out-BlackJacks the BlackJack? - Engadget Mobile

DigiTimes is a great source for little bits of surprising info right out of Taiwan (Home of all sorts of WM device makers). The latest snippet is that Microsoft expects WM6 (of whatever it will be called) to start rolling out within 6 months or so, but really hitting its stride a year after that. What I want to know is when we get Photon.

Taiwan handset makers estimate the system will become the mainstream platform in the market during the second half of 2008. According to Wu, shipments of handset devices based on the latest operating system usually ship in volume about six months after the first model is introduced.

Read: Windows Mobile 6.0-based handsets to hit the market in 1H07

Mobile-review has a great, er, review of the upcoming version of Windows Mobile, currently codenamed Crossbow. As they say, don't expect a revolution just yet - that'll come with the next version, Photon.

In any case, there's some notables in there you'll want to check out. Here's the spoiler, though: you get more eye candy, better button support, built-in VOIP, and better integration with MS Exchange 12

*Nevertheless, the brand-new operating system could be called “Windows Mobile 5.0 Second Edition” for it lacks tons of all-new features and total system revamp as in the case of Windows Mobile 5.0. *

Read: Mobile-review.com Review of Windows Mobile 6.0 for PPC (Crossbow) operating system