The next, officially announced, big update for Windows Mobile will be - as Microsoft calls it - "6 on 6", which is Internet Explorer Mobile 6 on Windows Mobile 6.1. The current Internet Explorer Mobile code, as it is used for today's Windows Mobile devices and smartphones, is based on the pretty much outdated Internet Explorer 4.x, which was initially released back in September, 1997! The time of Windows 95 and Windows NT 4, when the World Wide Web was pretty young. So no question, it is time for an update! And while some called 6 on 6 vaporware already, even if Microsoft's Andy Lees confirmed its upcoming release in our earlier interview, you can see bellow that it exists indeed as the the screenshots we recently received proves.

Internet Explorer Mobile 6 provides two different compatibility options - Mobile and Desktop:

And while the Mobile mode identifies it as "[Device Name] (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 8.12; MSIEMobile 6.0)", the Desktop mode identifies it as "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)":

So far the theory. In reality you can see the difference if you visit the::unwired which works with browser sniffing to serve the appropriate layout. On the left, the::unwired in Mobile mode, on the right in Desktop mode and as you can see, the Desktop mode looks quite similar to the::unwired on your PC:

So far so good. But some things irritates me: Why does the scrollbars on the right and bottom look like Windows 95 or Windows CE? That's not the "fresh" Windows Mobile 6.1 style. Also I haven't seen a single indication of "tabbed browsing" which means Internet Explorer Mobile 6 might still offers a single instance for Web browsing only.
Anyway, as soon as I have access to a Windows 6 on 6 upgraded device, I will follow-up with a hands-on review.

Cheers ~ Arne