Windows Phone 7 is out there

Windows Phone 7 is out there

Microsoft have announced that after the Windows Phone 7 OS has been used daily by more than 1,000 people in Microsoft and over 10,000 developers that the technical preview is now out there to the broader community. From yesterday they say that thousands of prototype phones from Asus, LG and Samsung are making their way into the hands of developers over the next few weeks.

The whole mobile OS has moved on massively since Microsoft first released Pocket PC and this early preview is getting some pretty mixed reviews.

The BoyGenius Report states that "There is no killer application on Windows Phone 7, and we can’t see an overwhelming reason to use one instead of an iPhone, BlackBerry or Android handset. Whether Microsoft’s OS updates to the platform will be enough to change our minds in the future is up to them, but for now, they’ve created a decent mobile operating system from scratch, but it unfortunately still has that Microsoft feel. And that’s not the best thing sometimes."

Infoworld is alot more brutal stating "Windows Phone 7: Don't bother with this disaster Microsoft's demos of its great mobile hope shows Windows Phone 7 to be only a tepid knockoff of a 2007-era iPhone"

ZDNet balance the views stating "After using the Technical Preview version of Windows Phone 7 in an up close and personal way I can honestly say that I am quite excited for the holiday season when we will see these devices launching from Microsoft".

Finally Engadget give a more cautious review "What we've been presented with here doesn't exactly feel like a complete mobile operating system in many ways. Some parts of Windows Phone 7 are more like a wireframe -- an interesting design study, an example of what a next-gen phone platform could be. That's both good and bad. On one side, we're still really excited by the prospect of Metro as a viable, clean-slate approach to the mobile user experience, and there are lots of smart moves being made that could lead to greatness. On the other side, Microsoft has to turn this into a viable retail product that can hang with the fiercest competition in the history of the cellphone in just a few months' time, and there are some serious issues that need to be addressed. Frankly, it's a little scary."

So what does that tell us? In my view this a pre-Beta v1 Mobile OS and thus is going to have some flaws and missing capabilities, the problem is that Microsoft has to finalise this quickyl to get it out to the vendors and carriers so that they can do their testing in order to get it released before the end of the year, so the time to make any changes is almost over. Let's face it, huge changes like multi tasking and cut n paste aren't going to be there. With iPhone now on v4 hardware and the 4th iteration of the OS, and Android making some major changes with Froyo, is it all too late from Microsoft? Time and sales figures will tell...