There's a new Windows Smartphone coming to town...
While at the BlogHer10 conference in New York, I was able to meet with the Microsoft representatives to discuss their upcoming Windows Phone 7 Smartphone. If you read my first smartphone review for the HTC Imagio, then you know that I have been using Microsoft based smartphones since my son was a baby, so I am glad that Microsoft is releasing a series of new smartphones to go up against the iPhone and Android phones on the market.
Whats New with Windows Phone 7?
The Microsoft representative gave me a 30 minute demo of her prototype phone and I really liked it (other than the pink in the interface, which is changeable). The START menu interface is completely different than any smartphone that I have used. The START menu interface reminded me visually of the interface of the Kin social media phone. The interface is a series of tiles each tied to a different application.You can drag and drop contacts, photos and other apps that you care the most about to the main menu. This will make the START menu completely different for every user.
The base hardware for the phone will contain the following:
- Three buttons for START, SEARCH, and BACK.
- A 5+ mp camera, 256mg+ of RAM and 8 GB+ of Flash memory.
- Media library access through Zune software.
- Integrated marketplace for downloading all apps.
- XBOX Live and Bing Maps available through Cloud services.
Contacts are integrated with Facebook and you can choose which contacts with whom you want information to be integrated.
The base hardware for the phone will contain the following:
- Three buttons for START, SEARCH, and BACK.
- A 5+ mp camera, 256mg+ of RAM and 8 GB+ of Flash memory.
- Media library access through Zune software.
- Integrated marketplace for downloading all apps.
- XBOX Live and Bing Maps available through Cloud services.
Contacts are integrated with Facebook and you can choose which contacts with whom you want information to be integrated.
The feature that I loved the most was the combining and syncing of calendars. I have my main calendar on my work computer in Outlook and also a Google calendar. With the Windows Phone 7, I can combine the Outlook calendar and the Google calendar into one integrated calendar and the phone will color code the calendars so I can easily see which entry is part of which calendar - so cool!
When will it be available?
The Windows Phone 7 will be available this holiday season. According the the Windows Phone 7 Twitter account, the phone carriers will be ATT, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile and the hardware manufactures will include HTC, Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson. Microsoft was yet to announce which manufactures and carriers will be part of the holiday launch.
Hopefully, Microsoft will select me to demo the phone so that I can give you a more detailed review. But until then, below is a video demo of the new Windows 7 phone.
FREE Windows Phone 7 Developer Classroom Classes Available
If you are a smartphone software developer, there are FREE one day classes available to teach how to develop applications for the Windows Phone 7 Series. One of the FREE classes will be held in the Detroit area on September 21, 2010. Click here for more information and to register.
FREE Windows Phone 7 Developer Online Training Available.
Don't have time for classroom training? Then take it online. There are 12 Windows Phone 7 Developer Training sessions in total and each session is about 50 minutes in length. It's self-paced and of course its FREE. Click here for more info on the Windows Phone 7 FREE Developer Online Training.
Don't have time for classroom training? Then take it online. There are 12 Windows Phone 7 Developer Training sessions in total and each session is about 50 minutes in length. It's self-paced and of course its FREE. Click here for more info on the Windows Phone 7 FREE Developer Online Training.
Enjoy,
Click here to read all the posts from BlogHer10.
