It looks like the pictures we brought you back in late September of Crossbow are genuine. Additional information suggests that we will Crossbow will be sent to manufacturers by the end of the year with devices sporting the new OS appearing in early to mid 2007 (Other sources suggest a mid to late 2007 release though). Crossbow will feature a UI that takes after Vista, strong links with Office 2007 and Exchange 12 as well as a new version of Office Communicator. Crossbow will be based on the current CE kernel while Photon (the next version) will use the CE 6.0 kernel (codenamed Yamazaki).
Details on how Microsoft plans to further integrate the Pocket PC and Smartphone versions have not yet been revealed.
Update: New screenshots added.