Smartphone Tech Trends of 2011
Strong, healthy competition in a budding market has aided significantly in the rapid advancement of Smartphone technology that we’ve seen so far this year. Smartphone performance alone has grown by leaps and bounds, at rates which we likely won’t see again for several years, but this doesn’t mean progress will be stifled. In fact, things should continue along at this accelerated rate throughout the rest of the year.
In our opinions, the Windows Phone 7 platform is under appreciated for games, apps, media and more. We're going to rectify this grave injustice one app at a time through our new WinPhone App of the Week column. 
After a delay of several months, Microsoft has started pushing out the first full-scale update to the Windows Phone 7 platform. The so-called NoDo update brings some much anticipated features, like copy and paste. The rollout is starting slow, with unbranded devices getting the update notification first. Carrier branded devices might be a whole different story though.
According to Bloomberg, Microsoft had finally made the call analysts had been expecting. The Zune player is dead. Instead of making Zune hardware for direct sale to consumers, Redmond will focus their efforts on the Zune software experience in Windows Phone 7. The company believes they have a stronger position in digital entertainment on the phone side, but they face stiff competition.
There has been some back and forth as people try to sort out the details of the Microsoft-Nokia deal. Some said that Nokia was only accepting software and marketing assistance from Microsoft, but many suspected there was a cold, hard cash payoff going on. Today Bloomberg is reporting that Microsoft has committed to pay the Finnish company $1 billion to promote and develop Windows Phone 7 devices.
Some time ago Sony Ericcson was supposed to build a Windows Phone 7 device, but those plans were put on hold when Sony Ericcson got cold feet about the risk of "standardizing" its smartphones. A year later, some blurry pictures of a supposed Sony Ericcson Windows Phone 7 device surfaced at Lizhecome, a Chinese blog site. Could this be the real deal?
Sprint is gearing up to launch its first Windows Phone 7 device on March 20, the HTC Arrive, Sprint announced. You may also see this one referred to as the HTC 7 Pro, which is how it's referred to globally. The HTC Arrive will run $200 after a $100 mail-in-rebate and obligatory 2-year service agreement or eligible upgrade.
After the small spat Angry Birds developer Rovio had with Microsoft over some preemptive advertizing, we were unsure that the popular game would be coming to the WP7. But now official word has come that Angry Birds will hit Windows Phone 7 on April 6th. The app will be packing some WP7-specific goodies too.
Microsoft took great pains to talk up the ease of the Windows Phone update process when announcing the OS. It was their intention to draw a clear distinction between WP7, and the haphazard Android update process. Despite what we can only assume is their best effort, some serious issues are cropping up with this first small update.
Microsoft’s controversial decision to ban certain types of open source software had the company defending itself last week from both from the blogging community, and embarrassingly enough, their own internal legal department who was forced to admit they would have to 
