Looks like Ars Technica has done a nice summary of the TechEd 2009 and depending on your thoughts and feelings about the new UI layout in WM6.5, you may find this admission from Senior Project Manager Loke Uei Tan either remarkable for the talent or shocking due to the obvious time constraints, which resulted in an uninspiring UI layout:

The reason why we couldn't complete the interface on Windows Mobile 6.5 is because of time. We only spend what, eight months, nine months, to build 6.5 from ground up and it's actually an amazing engineering feat. But, in order to do that, we had to do some prioritization and we had to cut certain features. Eventually, we will make sure that the UI capabilities are carried out throughout the whole platform.

This pretty much confirms what we already knew: WM6.5 was not really suppose to happen, that in effect it was a stop-gap till WM7 gets released.  Just how old is WM7?  Anyone remember a thing called "Photon" mentioned at the end of 2005?  Yeah.

Anyways, being WMExperts, we're going to be less snarky than Gizmodo and give the WinMo team a little pat on the back, with a firm, violent shaking saying 'you better not let us down with 'Photon' er WM7'!