Windows Phone 7 Info

[Winnow]

Just passing along some links in case peeps interested in these phones:

Phones:
http://gizmodo.com/5660886/all-the-wind ... e-7-phones

Games and Apps:
http://gizmodo.com/5661083/windows-phon ... ok-awesome

Launch Apps
http://gizmodo.com/5661112/the-essentia ... aunch-apps

All Gizmodo links. Haven't had chance to check them out yet. It will be nice to have another strong competitor to iPhone and Android.

[Aabidano]

Shafting the operators hasn't seemed to hurt google all that much yet. Not as much as their product and apps have anyway.

All the UK operators will be selling handsets with Windows Phone 7, and Microsoft has waxed lyrical about how they'll each be able to add value to the "Always Delightful" experience. But peek beneath the words and it's hard to see what an operator stands to gain by adding value within the limitations imposed by Redmond, or why the operators would be interested in helping Microsoft at all.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/12 ... s_phone_7/

[Animalor]

The phones launched on Monday to limited supply and limited carrier choice. Apparently sold 40k units in the first day. Sprint's HTC HD7 sold out and Samsung did really well with the focus. The Dell Venue Pro is still a week or two out.

I sadly can't justify buying a smart phone out of my own pocket since the office pays for a Blackberry for me to use however I contact my Rogers corporate rep and she'll send me a Focus demo unit once she gets them. Looking forward to playing with it.

[Soreali]

I'll take my Droid over windows mobile any day.

[Animalor]

WP7 is not Windows Mobile. Rebuilt from scratch from the ground up.
No backwards compatibility for apps or any of the old. The UI is reminicent of the awesome work they have been doing with the Zune/ZuneHD.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/
(Warning - the site has music)

Oh and it does Xbox Live games/Achievements too

[Funkmasterr]

I have zero confidence any Windows phone could even dream of competing with Android. I could be wrong but I really highly doubt it.

[miir]

I've messed around with evaluated one of the new Windows 7 phones and they are actually pretty slick.

[Animalor]

I dunno about that one Funk. They're kinda taking the best of both worlds from android and Apple.

A controlled platform where they have a strict reference design and specifications for the hardware and guidelines on what to do and what not to do with the software.
Software updates and controlled and pushed by Microsoft.

A carrier can choose not to allow an update immediately but MS will not allow them to be more than 1 update behind the curve, avoiding that fragmentation problem that Android currently had.

All Microsoft needs to do now to have a serious contender are
- Copy and Paste
- Multi-tasking
- beefed up SDK's that give access to the camera and (I believe) the location systems
- Tons and Tons of Apps.

The amount of devs that have signed up has apparently sky-rocketed in the last few days and a lot of the feedback is that the platform is a LOT easier to work with than Android or iOS. And the MS approval process for apps is apparently quite a bit faster than Apple at this point.

Also, the hacking community has already figured out how to side-load native code on the device so homebrew is not that far off either.

[Animalor]

Swung by a Bell Mobility store to test one out this afternoon and WP7 looks fantastic.

If ever I'm in a situation where I need to buy a smart phone (or the office stops paying for mine), this will be the platform I'll be getting.

The device they had on demo right now is the LG Optimus Quantum, I'm not sure how I like holizontal slideout keyboards but the OS itself is slick.

I played with it for about 5 minutes or so and let it go cause there was another person that came in the store while I was there to try it out specifically.