Windows Mobile 5.0 featured increased battery life due to Persistent storage capability.

Among new hardware features were enhanced Bluetooth support, default QWERTY keyboard-support and a management interface for Global Positioning System (GPS).

Business customers benefited from a new error reporting facility similar to that present in desktop and server Windows systems.

Caller ID now supports photos so a user can apply an image to each contact to show when a call is received.

This release was the first to include DirectDraw with hardware acceleration, replacing the deprecated graphics component of GAPI, and Pocket MSN can be viewed directly from the Today Screen.