Windows Phone 7: The first impression

To start with I would say it is a huge shift from its predecessor, just like windows 3.1 from windows XP!

It is a meaningful phone OS and almost most of the things that I or you could wish from the Smartphone we carry today.

Xbox on the phone has finally arrived!

Tiles that are different not 4X4 or 4X6

Until last year the Smartphone were only meant for business and corporate world. But now the market has dramatically changed with more and more people going for Smartphone and especially the teenagers. With the social networking, Web 2.0 and availability of internet Smartphone are no more a luxury but a necessity for anyone who is hooked on to the internet. Recently I met a school going son of my friend and he was carrying a android and is online all the time on various social networks.

Windows Phone 7 is a huge leap in the Microsoft strategy that will bring it in direct competition with Apple and Google. Right now Microsoft is publicly previewing Windows Phone 7 for the first time at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This OS for the windows phones will be available for consumption sometime later this year.

With the Microsoft coming into this field armored with phone 7 surely it seems to give hard time to iphone and google as this will bring all these feature to already strong business friendly windows mobile. I have extensively used windows mobile loaded HTC phones and I am a great fan of these as these really are true business phones unlike iphone or androids. With the Phone 7 coming laced with all those feature it is going to be a kill for sure. The key are where Microsoft needs to think is how to develop an application market before the launch of the OS where anyone can create and post the apps to be used by others. This will make it a perfect replacement of PC that you can carry in your pocket.

I spent some time on Microsoft Windows Phone 7 and here are my first impressions:

• It is a complete break from whatever Microsoft had in the past for mobiles. It is a fresh out-of-box thinking. It is not an AVATAR but a all new from scratch as it seems that Microsoft is going to kill the Windows mobile in coming time. It seems Windows Mobile is all dead now!
• The interface is all new. It is like a concept of tiles/grids. The font is nice and big. Something very different from all phones in the market today. The design is much similar to the Zune HD. You can easily zoom, pan, and flip from screen to screen.
• Never lose your contacts even if you lose the phone. Phone & also provides ability to sync and backup all your contacts with multiple clouds like Windows Live, Exchange, MyPhone.
• Sync rest of the things directly to your PC by connecting your phone to the PC. You can easily synch all your audios, videos.
• The phone is seamlessly connected to get the latest updates for weather etc. The people hub is a nice place where you can see all the information gathered from facebook, Windows Live, twitter. But it certainly needs a hookup with other social apps too. It uses a concept of Live Tiles, if you want to be on the top of updates from someone special make him/her a tile on your screen. You will get all the updates on a real-time and that too seamlessly. You can also create a tile to your own profile and post to it directly from your phone screen.
• Like ipod in iphone, now zune will be for the phone!
• Using the hub you can share all your photos and videos with social networks. The latest photos uploaded by all of your contacts will also be loaded seamlessly on the hub.
• You can scroll, zoom the photos with a touch.
• Xbox on the phone has finally arrived! There is a tile named Xbox on the phone. This s a huge paradigm shift and a new standard in the industry where such state of the art games can be played on your phone. Let’s wait and watch what is on the plate!
• As usual you can browse with internet explorer and outlook is there for your emails.
• The best feature of Windows phone I like is the support for OneNote, my favorite mobile and desktop application. It is the best application in the market that makes your office work so easy to manage and handle. For sure it is there and you can try it.
• Bings Maps will come as a default map option.
• If you want to search search with Bing!
• Purchase and download apps at Marketplace hub.
• Connect to Microsoft Office, SharePoint Workspace, and OneNote using the Office hub. This will be wonderful application for all Corporate/Business users.
• Possible Hardware requirements: (Source intomobile)
  • Core requirements:
    Processor: ARM v6+, L2 Cache, VFP, Open GL ES 2.0 graphics HW (QCOM 8k, Nvidia AP15/16* and TI 3430 all meet spec)
    Memory: 256MB+ DRAM, 1G+ Flash (at least 512MB fast flash