Windows Phone 7 – Mobile OS

Now I feel that I should start writing something on Windows Phone 7 being a techie working on Microsoft products. Recently I have started learning Android, so thought I should not miss WP7 as well.
Windows Phone 7 is the latest version of Windows Mobile Operating System developed by Microsoft which is a successor to its Windows Mobile Platform. Windows Phone 7 is a rebranding of Microsoft’s old mobile OS called Windows Mobile. Before the official announcement of Windows Phone 7, Microsoft began to refer to devices running Windows Mobile as “Windows Phones”.

Let’s list the features of WP7 as follows

• Windows Phone has a new user interface code named as “Metro”. The home screen (called the "Start screen") is made up of "tiles", which by default are links to important features, such as phone, music and videos, email, office, and contacts.

• Enhanced virtual keyboard

• Internet Explorer on Windows Phone 7 allows the user to maintain a list of favorite web pages and show a tile linking to a web page on the Start screen. The browser supports up to 6 tabs, which can all load in parallel.

• Contacts are organized via “people hub”

• Setup support Hotmail, Outlook, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, and other email services and also features support for POP and IMAP accounts.

• Zune for Windows Phone 7 is an application providing entertainment and synchronization capabilities between PC and Phone. Xbox Live on Windows Phone 7 brings Console-like gaming experience to phones by displaying the user's avatar in a 3D fashion. Via "Games Hub", the users are able to interact with the avatar, view gamer score and leader boards, message Xbox Live friends, and Spotlight.

• Bing Maps on Windows Phone 7 provides satellite imagery and real-time traffic information and also generates directions between two point locations and well as from the current location.

• The "Office hub" organized all Microsoft Office programs and documents. Microsoft Office Mobile provides operability between Windows Phone 7 and the desktop version of Microsoft Office.

Software and OS updates in Windows Phone 7 will be delivered to Windows Phone users via Microsoft Update, as they are for desktop Windows users. The software component, called Windows Phone Update, exists both on the phone (for smaller updates, over-the-air) and in the Zune PC software (for larger updates, via USB connection).
Windows Phone 7 applications will be based on Silverlight, XNA and .NET Compact Framework. Windows Phone 7 will only run applications that have first been approved by Microsoft and made available via the Windows Phone Marketplace.

But still we have few limitations for WP7 such as does not support copy or paste / multi tasking for 3rd party applications etc.