Windows Phone - Lucky 7?

Anthony Caruana
Wednesday, 13 October 2010 10:36

Your IT - Mobility

With a focus on drawing together work and play, communications and entertainment and trying to help users avoid the distractions of complexity while using their smartphone, Microsoft unveiled its latest mobile OS, Windows Phone 7. Although the OS has been in public view for several months announcements regarding handsets, carrier partners and Marketplace were made yesterday by Microsoft Australia's CEO Tracey Fellowes.

Flanked by Telstra's Chief Marketing Officer Kate McKenzie, Microsoft announced that Telstra would be a major launch partner with the HTC Mozart 7 being shipped from next week at $0 up front on a $49 per month cap plan. A new $120 per month plan was also announced that gives unlimited local calls, SMS and MMS with 3GB of data. This is a clear signal that the post Sol Trujillo Telstra is prepared to compete on price as well as network coverage.

As well as HTC, LG and Samsung announced new Windows Phone 7 handsets with the LG Optimus that sports a 3.7" display and slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Samsung's Omnia 7 boasts a 4" AMOLED display and 1GHz processor. Unlike many of the other handsets ITWire were shown at the launch, the Omnia 7 will be exclusive to Optus for $0 upfront on a $79 per month cap plan.

As far as the user experience goes, it's fair to say that Microsoft has taken a scorched-earth approach. Almost nothing of the old Windows Mobile heritage can be seen. The Today screen has been replaced by the Start page. Rather than having a Start menu and icons the main screen is covered by a series of tiles.

Each tile can represent an application, image, contact or hub. A hub is a collection of information and applications that go together. Rather than allowing carriers or OEMs to customise the user interface, Microsoft has standardised the interface. The only way OEMs and carriers can alter the interface is to add their own tiles. For example, Telstra can't modify buttons on the new handsets to only work woth their own services. However, the Telstra handsets we saw had a tile configured as the Telstra hub, directing us to a number of Telstra services.

Each tile is live, reflecting changes in real time. For example, the People tab aggregates contact information from your Contact list and Facebook. When a contact updates their profile photo in Facebook, the Start screen People tile shows the updated image. Similarly, the Internet Explorer tile will show a picture of the currently opened web page.