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. continue reading…







