2860421001-windows-phone-7-launch-early-october
BARCELONA, Spain — Feb. 15, 2010 — Today at Mobile World Congress 2010, Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled the next generation of Windows® Phones, Windows Phone 7 Series. With this new platform, Microsoft offers a fresh approach to phone software, distinguished by smart design and truly integrated experiences that bring to the surface the content people care about from the Web and applications. For the first time ever, Microsoft will bring together Xbox LIVE games and the Zune music and video experience on a mobile phone, exclusively on Windows Phone 7 Series. Partners have already started building phones; customers will be able to purchase the first phones in stores by holiday 2010.
100719-windows-phone-7-8a_grid-6x2
Windows Phone 7 nears the finish line with SDK release date
Even as Windows Phone 7′s launch rapidly approaches—currently expected to be October for the EU, November for the US—developers are still using incomplete beta tools for creating applications for Microsoft’s new phone platform. Though the company has still not announced exact launch dates for the phones, it has revealed a few more key developer details. The final, complete developer tools will ship on September 16, and Marketplace will start accepting application submissions from early October.
The updated SDK will give developers long-awaited built-in support for two of the new OS’s key user interface concepts: “panoramas,” the sideways-panning mechanism for building the OS’s hubs; and “pivots,” the building block for showing filtered views of data, seen in the e-mail client. These two concepts are found throughout the built-in applications in Windows Phone 7, and are a key part of its striking appearance—a look many third parties want to replicate. Their inclusion in the SDK is sure to be welcomed by the platform’s developers.
And it seems that there will be quite a few to do the welcoming. Microsoft says that the betas have been downloaded some 300,000 times. This figure spans three betas and is sure to include a substantial number of people downloading more than once and people downloading to take a look but not actually create any applications. Still, the number implies that there has been substantial interest, in spite of the fact that no one can buy Windows Phone 7 hardware yet.
It’s astounding that until this moment, three years after the iPhone, the biggest software company in the world basically didn’t compete in mobile. Windows Phone 7 Series is more than the Microsoft smartphone we’ve been waiting for. Everything’s different now.
Today, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft is publicly previewing Windows Phone 7 for the first time. The brand new, totally fresh operating system will appear in phones this year, but not until the holidays. All of the major wireless carriers and every likely hardware maker are backing it, and they’d be stupid not to. It’s awesome. We’ve got a serious hands on for you to check out, but here is everything that you need to know:
The name—Windows Phone 7 Series—is a mouthful, and unfortunately, the epitome of Microsoft’s worst naming instincts, belying the simple fact that it’s the most groundbreaking phone since the iPhone. It’s the phone Microsoft should’ve made three years ago. In the same way that the Windows 7 desktop OS was nearly everything people hoped it would be, Windows Phone 7 is almost everything anyone could’ve dreamed of in a phone, let alone a Microsoft phone. It changes everything. Why? Now that Microsoft has filled in its gaping chasm of suck with a meaningful phone effort, the three most significant companies in desktop computing—Apple, Google and Microsoft—now stand to occupy the same positions in mobile. Phones are officially computers that happen to fit in your pocket.
Windows Phone 7 is also something completely new for Microsoft: A total break from the past. Windows Mobile isn’t just dead, the body’s been dumped, buried and paved over by a rainbow brick road.