IE Mobile 6 cooked into custom ROM for HTC Touch HD

While Microsoft won't be handing it out as an update for your WinMo 6 device, ROM cookers are making Internet Explorer Mobile 6 available now. Paul over at MoDaCo has built a custom ROM for the HTC Touch HD that includes IE Mobile 6 -- that's "6 on 6" as they say. Unfortunately, it's only available as a ROM update, not as an invdividual application installer. If you recall, Microsoft said that IE Mobile 6 won't be offered for download, because "the rich media experiences that IE Mobile 6 enables require more powerful, advanced devices." Perhaps in salty salute, Paul's ROM also sets the default explorer search engine to Google. Instructions and tales of caution just beyond the read link.

[Via GadgetMix]

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 19th 2008 9:06AM]

old hat! It's been on custom roms for regular HTC Touch/Vogue for over a month. It's terrible.. at least on the Touch..
- Too slow. No WinMo phone to date has the power to properly run WinMo, let alone load full pages. Even Opera & Skyfire are too damn slow on the phone. Great browsers if the hardware could keep up.
- Too "version 1.0" of where the rest of the browsers are now. Opera has been doing full screen properly for 2 years or so in this market, now M$ decides to join?
- Doesn't work well with onscreen keypads. You have to use T9 mode sometimes to get the characters to register, and other times you have to use ABC mode. That may just be because it was an early port to an unsupported phone...

But all in all.. it suffers the same fate as all the other full page browsers... not enough processor/ram to work well on a phone.
IE5 works because of sites like the blogsmith ones that offer a mobile version. Its much faster and easier to browse these sites in IE5 mobile rather than wait 10 secs for Opera to start and 30 secs for it to load all the advertisements.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 19th 2008 11:50AM]

HTC's new line has the power, it just doesn't have the proper drivers to take advantage of that power. There is a long (very long) spiel and explanation on XDA-Dev.

[theattack Posted Dec 19th 2008 9:24AM]

no comments on the screen shot? They couldnt do ESPN or the weather, it had to be a man killing a girl? Good Times

[Oldtaku Posted Dec 19th 2008 5:28PM]

The thing that really gets me about this is why the hell would I want MS's sh@#-ass browser on my Touch Pro when I have Opera? What's the point? Just to have it, I guess.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 19th 2008 11:37PM]

@ Sizer
Actually this is a rom for Touch HD.. not sure if designed for the Touch Pro