I hope you already know that the long awaited Windows Phone 7 is out. This is the Microsoft’s latest mobile operating system everybody was waiting for. As usual this is just an OS, not a Zunephone or not a standalone device like iPhone. Microsoft believes in freedom of choice especially in the case of hardware. They also believe same software excellence can be delivered without selling a dedicated device. Rumor has it they are going to release a massive update to Windows Phone 7 in January 2011, which can be treated as large as Windows Phone 8. And I believe Microsoft will continue to push such updates without abandoning your existing Windows Phone 7 devices, which is nice in comparison to world’s one of the most popular smartphones. Let’s take a quick tour around the phone.

Microsoft has come up with a brand new concept of phone. They have taken nothing from the predecessor or the competitors. This is a completely new start in terms of user interface and user experience. They are calling it Metro. We will talk about it later on. There are applications and there are also hubs which we will see in a while.

Bing has been used not only as a search engine, but also as a decision engine. Windows Phone OS set the bar for hardware requirements quite high, and it’s only fair in order not to compromise the experience throughout the devices from many different vendors.

Developer’s Choice

The true surprise for the developers was the choice of paths. There are two ways to develop a Windows Phone 7 app, using Silverlight runtime which is basically Silverlight 3.0, and XNA runtime, for developing Games which is subset of the XNA Game engine.

Metro UI

Metro UI is a design language and it is a result of hard work Microsoft Research has put behind for years. The special feature of Metro is there’s always less irrelevant graphics. It is mostly text based. It is a consistent design pattern which presents information in perfect color, font and size combination, so that you can quickly glance and go.

Hubs

Like all the smartphones out there, there are apps in Windows Phone, but there are other things which are known as hubs. Hubs are basically collection of relevant apps grouped into a tile. When you glance the tile, it takes you to the page where those apps are found in integrated fashion. Now, if you look at the People hub, you will see there are recent contacts, you can swipe left or right to see other parts of the hub. There you see alphabetically sorted contacts with Facebook status tied to them as well as the text messages that you have exchanged. You can also search and add contacts.

Another hub is Music + Videos. As you can expect you will have all sorts of multimedia including FM Radio and Podcasts are here integrated into this hub. Similarly you have Pictures, Games with XBOX Live integrated with it, as well as Office Productivity suite.

Bing as a Decision Engine

Let’s take a look at how they have integrated bing service into the phone. It actually helps you to take decisions. When you type niagara falls restaurants, it automatically recognizes that you are hungry and looking for a restaurant to dine. There you go the list of nearby restaurants on the map along with their ratings and address.

Let’s take a look at the hardware spec they set as minimum. The reason was to assure user that they have absolute freedom to choose any device, because it will deliver certain level of experience that Microsoft thinks user will not complain about.

The complete episode is on CodeTV: http://codetv.net/41/getting-to-know-windows-phone-7/