Windows Phone 7 Series announced - long live Windows Mobile 6.5
Microsoft has removed the wraps from one of its most guarded secrets, unveiling Windows Phone 7 Series, an operating system for mobile that promises to make it easier to work through your mobile and social life. While the company has demonstrated the software, we can't buy any handset yet because those are still at least nine months away.
Windows Phone Series 7 introduces Hubs that guide you through different use cases. In each Hub you can browse through it and change how you see information. Data is constantly updated in the background - your music, photos or social networks are constantly updated, with this being reflected in the tiles.
The new phone also ditches the old ActiveSync (Windows XP) and Windows Mobile Device Center (Windows Vista and Windows 7) in favour or Zune software. And Microsoft promised Zune Marketplace will be available wherever Windows Phone 7 Series is officially sold.
This is a move from an application centric interface to a more activities and social centric interface. Will it work well? Who knows, as I said an actual product is still nine months away. Developers will get a lot more information at MIX10.
Does it mean the death of Windows Mobile as we know it today? It appears not, according to istartedsomething, that reports both Windows Phone 7 Series and the current Windows Mobile will co-exist.
I also received some interesting information today that points in that direction. For example people buying apps from the Marketplace for Windows Mobile know that it's currently limited to a specific geographic region and developers paid to have their apps listed in different regions. This limited the reach of applications. Well, no more, since Microsoft is making it easier for developers to list their applications by removing additional listing fees. Once the application is listed in the marketplace (with its $99 fee) it can then be listed in any region for free.
Also users will have the option to browse the marketplace catalogue for other regions, with prices listed in the user's own currency. This will improve the catalogue vastly, because since launch users could only see apps available in their own regions, limiting the offerings.
These changes, plus what istartedsomething reported earlier, seem to point that Windows Mobile will continue in the market for some time, while Windows Phone 7 Series comes to life.
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Comment by KevDaly, on 18-Feb-2010 15:51
Mary-Jo Foley has an update on the Zune compatibility issue: it's the playback experience and desktop software they're promising will be available, not necessarily the music purchasing service.
We'll see how that develops though.
I wish I was going to MIX though, I think this is seriously cool (although I wish they'd ditch the Office-style "Are you sure that's not a pass phrase?" name - this would be a good time for some innovation in naming. A good start would be not to include "Windows" in the name. Where would the XBox 360 be if it'd been called Windows Gaming Device 360 Edition With Associated Services?).
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Comment by askelon, on 17-Feb-2010 16:42
I watched the 22min vid on it yesterday. Looks damned nice and if Telecom actually do their job I will get one when its time to retire my Treo Pro.. I thought they were still going to be using WMDC but replace the multimedia part with the Zune software? Either way fingers crossed they dont manage to stuff the whole thing up ;)