Microsoft Announces Windows Phone 7 Platform
Microsoft Announces Windows Phone 7 Platform
Posted 02/15/2010 at 12:51pm
| by Bart Salisbury
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Microsoft’s made it official--it’s taking another crack at the smartphone market with the “next generation” Windows Phone platform: Windows Phone 7. Microsoft says Windows Phone 7 will bring together “the content people care about”, including applications and Internet. And, for the first time, bring Xbox LIVE games and Zune music and video to a mobile phone.
Windows Phone 7 is designed as a “holistic” system that “informs every aspect of the phone.” The Start screen contains “dynamically updated “live tiles”” which show users real-time content. Rather than an icon linking to an application, for example, it can be linked to a person, making all information on that person available through that icon.
Windows Phone 7 provides further integration through “hubs”. According to Microsoft: “Hubs bring together related content from the Web, applications and services into a single view to simplify common tasks.” Windows Phone 7 includes six hubs: People, Pictures, Games, Music + Video, Marketplace, and Office.
Microsoft says it has partnered with mobile operations, including AT&T, Spring Sprint, and Verizon Wireless, and manufacturers such as Dell, HTC, LG, and Sony Ericsson. The first Windows Phone 7 devices are expected to be on the market by “holiday 2010”. More information can be found at Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 site.
Image Credit: Microsoft
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Tekzel
February 16, 2010 at 12:36pm
I watched the demo. Didn't like a single thing about it. Looks like they are trying to cater too hard to the social networking junkies out there. I guess they outnumber us now.
Hate he UI. Expect to make the jump to Android next.
bart3385
February 16, 2010 at 6:54am
I hope one of the manufacturers (preferably Asus or Sony Ericsson) come up with a physical numeric keypad. Like the Asus P750 format: Numeric keypad with T9. For one-hand operation.
Nevermind the qwerty keypad. It's usability is just the same as software keypad. Two-hands operation. So that's covered.
Windows Mobile is old and buggy. But what kept me locked on to it is it's variety of choices. Some people like touchscreen-everything. Some likes qwerty. Some likes numeric keypad. And WinMo got all of it covered.
I hope Windows Phone 7 carries on this tradition.
I never gave iPhone the slightest thought because of it's purely touchscreen-everything concept.
dracx619
February 16, 2010 at 3:15am
i had kind of lost hope with winmo 6.5 being kind of a let down. i ordered my frist droid yesterday, thanks to letstalk.com, they are actually giving me 80 bucks and sprint lets us trade in every year so some good win 7 phones should be out by the time im ready to switch....pretty sweet it is.
violian
February 15, 2010 at 2:34pm
Wow, all I have to say is "Want, want, want!!!" I was an iPod Touch devoted fan for years, until I got the Zune HD, and I was converted since. The new Windows 7 phone has the exact same interface as the Zune HD, and I'm really looking forward to have it as a phone. And the design is really simplistic and clean. I hate it when phone manufactures try too hard when designing the exterior...take the Motorola Droid for instance....it ends up looking ugly.
Shadai
February 15, 2010 at 1:39pm
From everything I've seen it looks like a smooth, well-thought out approach to a phone UI. So unlike anything I expect from Mirosoft. Although lately, they've been doing quite well (see Zune, Windows 7). It will be interesting to see this late this year and what kind of phones it will appear on. I think I found my next phone, or rather, my next phone UI.
Sucks I have to wait.
neo1piv14
February 15, 2010 at 1:11pm
It's nice to see MS getting a decent foot forward in the smartphone market. The OS looks pretty slick from what I've seen.
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