For anyone who somewhat actively follows the mobile phone world (especially of the smart phone variety) it should come as no surprise that Microsoft has finally officially announced and revealed it’s new smart phone OS, Windows Phone 7 Series, at the MWC (Mobile World Conference) in Barcelona today.  There are hundreds, if not thousands of different portals on the interwebs where you can read the details of what 7 Series has to offer, read the liveblog of Microsoft’s announcement at MWC or check out a 22 minute long demonstration of the new OS, so I’m just going to summarize here and give you what you really want, my take.

The Quick (Details and such)

So what’s new, short and sweet?  I know it sounds trite but seriously, what isn’t new?  Hell even the OS’s name has changed from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone 7 Series (not exactly roll-off-the-tongue good but, hey).  Now if you take a quick look you’ll see that it looks nothing like WinMo 6.5.3 or any other previous MS Mobile OS, however, you will think right away (if you’re me or an equally techie webnerd) that it does look strikingly similar to the Zune HD.  Coincidence?  Not even remotely.  The interface theme is called Metro and it actually started with the refresh to Windows Media Player a while back, moved on to the Zune and has now found a new home in the 7 Series.  Large, bold text and lacking the ‘chrome’ or flashy graphics from other systems.  Simple, clean, wholly un-MS like from the start … except now it’s part of one of their main OSes, which is some sort of paradox I don’t want to think about right now.  If you stop to think about it (and you are actually interested in that sort of thing), it’s pretty impressive that MS, as big and unwieldy as it seems, was able to shed the WinMo skin so completely, though of course they desperately needed to.

The 7 Series phones will be held to a higher standard than previous WinMo phones.  There is now a (fairly high) standard of requirements for hardware if you fancy yourself a hardware ODM and want to build one of these bad boys yourself (if so I totally want one, just saying).  Specs include a multi-touch screen, specific resolution, minimum CPU speed, GPS, standard three front buttons (back, start and search) and no costume UI (sorry Sense UI).  7 Series phones will all feel the same, the experience will be universal from device to device.  Now that doesn’t mean they’ll all be the same, after all the CPU has a minimum but not a max, the screen size has to be a certain resolution but not a specific size, and I didn’t see or hear anything about a camera so that can be all over the place.

Integration?  You bet your ass.  Facebook in your People and Pictures, push email from exchange, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! mail and all that mess.  Windows Live sync including Xbox Live avatars, games and achievements and naturally, Zune.  So has the Zune Phone finally arrived?  Well you won’t here MS calling it that but basically, yes, yes it has.  The music+videos section of the OS is pretty much exactly what you’d find in your spiffy Zune HD.  Music, pictures and videos all sync up through the Zune software same as your other Zune devices and if you have a Zune Pass you’ll get the same ability to search for, and download, new music right from the phone without paying anything extra.

My Take

So what do I think?  Well thanks for asking.  The short, I’m stoked.  It’s no secret that I’ve never been a fan of iTunes or that I am a huge fan of the Zune so this will truly be the first device that will let me have my phone, PDA functions, music, videos, pictures and the internet all in one hand held bit of Sci-Fi glory.  I am not, however, blindly leaping into this, 7 Series will have to prove itself but from images and videos of what is still early software (looking at a Fall 2010 release for devices) running on prototype hardware the whole thing seems remarkably polished.  One slight disappointment will be the ever-present lack of flash on 7 Series phones, at least at launch.  Official press releases have stated that MS and Adobe have been working together but as Windows Phone 7 Series stands right now, flash is a missing bullet point.

Lets dig a big deeper into what this might mean for Zune and the marketplace.  It’s should be no surprise that Apple holds the lion’s share of the PMP market with the iPod and iPhone and that the Zune HD, while well received by critics, is not moving the needle quite fast enough.  Enter the 7 Series and all it’s hardware partners, including Qualcomm, Dell, Garmin-Asus, HP, HTC, Samsung, LG, Toshiba, Sony Ericsson and others and suddenly you’ve got a whole lot more Zune devices out there, cause guess what?  Each 7 Series phone is also a Zune.  WinMo, though the butt of many a joke in the smart phone market, still holds 13% of the market share putting it in 3rd place behind RIMM and Apple but above Android.  This refresh could both increase MS’s market share in the smart phone arena as well as deliver millions of new Zune devices to the world.  I’m hopeful that will give MS the ability to sign more content deals with music labels and movie studios and finally give iTunes the competition it deserves.  If the iPhone can kick MS in the pants so hard that it completely rethinks it’s smart phone OS from the ground up, why can’t MS do the same for Apple and iTunes?  Exciting times ahead folks.