Windows Phone 7 NYC Launch Highlights

by Manan on October 16th, 2010 / Comments off

Category: Just Being Manan

I was at the New york City Steve Ballmer keynote for the launch of Windows Phone 7. Class bunked, a 5 hour bus journey starting at 3AM, the day at the event and a 5 hour bus ride back the same day. For a Microsoft enthusiast, the only big news was Copy/Paste coming in 2011, other than that I got to meet a lot of people I’ve been reading for the past few years.

Engadget’s Nilay Patel, Joshua Topolsky and Paul Miller, WinSuperSite’s Paul Thurrott, ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, Adam and Brandon from PocketNow, CNet’s Ina Fried and jJhn from Techno Buffalo. As I kept updating the event over twitter, here are some of the highlights of the event:

My picture set:

Hands-on videos of the phones on display:

My favorite phone that I won’t be buying, the HTC HD7:

Click here to view the embedded video.

As to why I won’t be buying, the phone will be available on TMob and several friends have advised me against TMob.

The rest of the HTC line up in one video. The Surround, Trophy and Mozart:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Samsung Focus, I gotta play NFS Underground on it and it was fun:

Click here to view the embedded video.

AT&T U-Verse and Maps on the LG Quantum:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dell’s Venue Pro:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I tweeted using most of the handsets I played with taking at least one random picture. Here’s a list:

PS: Thanks to the folks at Zune, I got a one month Zune Pass subscription free which I intend to use once I get my WP7 device. Other then that all the attendees got was a cookie and a card with a URL to the press kit.

Published at: I'm Just Being Manan | Subscribe

Windows Phone 7 NYC Launch Highlights

Windows Phone 7 NYC Launch Highlights

by Manan on October 16th, 2010 / Comments off

Category: Just Being Manan

I was at the New york City Steve Ballmer keynote for the launch of Windows Phone 7. Class bunked, a 5 hour bus journey starting at 3AM, the day at the event and a 5 hour bus ride back the same day. For a Microsoft enthusiast, the only big news was Copy/Paste coming in 2011, other than that I got to meet a lot of people I’ve been reading for the past few years.

Engadget’s Nilay Patel, Joshua Topolsky and Paul Miller, WinSuperSite’s Paul Thurrott, ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, Adam and Brandon from PocketNow, CNet’s Ina Fried and jJhn from Techno Buffalo. As I kept updating the event over twitter, here are some of the highlights of the event:

My picture set:

Hands-on videos of the phones on display:

My favorite phone that I won’t be buying, the HTC HD7:

Click here to view the embedded video.

As to why I won’t be buying, the phone will be available on TMob and several friends have advised me against TMob.

The rest of the HTC line up in one video. The Surround, Trophy and Mozart:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Samsung Focus, I gotta play NFS Underground on it and it was fun:

Click here to view the embedded video.

AT&T U-Verse and Maps on the LG Quantum:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dell’s Venue Pro:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I tweeted using most of the handsets I played with taking at least one random picture. Here’s a list:

PS: Thanks to the folks at Zune, I got a one month Zune Pass subscription free which I intend to use once I get my WP7 device. Other then that all the attendees got was a cookie and a card with a URL to the press kit.

Published at: I'm Just Being Manan | Subscribe

Windows Phone 7 NYC Launch Highlights

Microsoft and Sharp to Launch Pink Phones in April?

by dave on March 2nd, 2010 / No Comment

Category: Devices

microsoft_pink_phones_sharp Microsoft and Sharp appear set to launch their combined effort at lower-end, teen/20-something targeted phones known as Pink phones, possibly as early as this April.

Gizmodo recently reported that two of these Sharp-made and possibly Microsoft-branded phones, codenamed “Pure” and “Lion”have hit the FCC. Considering the recent re-branding of Windows Mobile 6.5-based Windows Phones to “Windows Phone Classic Edition”, I think it is likely that these will be the first Windows Phone Classic Edition devices we see.

One of Mary Jo’s readers who says he’s looked at the files on these devices says:

“Pure and Lion are the higher end devices for these right now. HVGA display, CE OS6, Silverlight, and Brand new. I am looking at 561 *.dll files that make up the 100MB ROM. A lot of center around Zune in the Registry.

“Looks like Home screen has different feeds,” the reader said. The Pink devices “will be provided with firmware updates OTA (over the air.”

Mary Jo wrote a great piece outlining the pros and cons of Microsoft launching a branded phone of their own – you should check it out.

Every .Net developer just became a Windows Phone developer

by dave on March 2nd, 2010 / No Comment

Category: Software

In a recent blog post, Mary Jo Foley talks about Microsoft’s plans for Windows Phone developer environments, and concludes that we’re looking at a mix of Silverlight and .Net, with Visual Studio 10 tying it all together. 

Mary Jo quotes her anonymous Microsoft insider as saying:

“The dev platform is Silverlight 3, plus elements of 4, using Blend and a Visual Studio add-in. The kicker is that while it is XAML-like, it is not pure XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language). This is actually OK, as it keeps the footprint nice and small.

“In theory you can make an entire app inside of Blend, but I think you will need Visual Studio to hook it all together in C#. In the war vs. Apple for apps, every .NET developer just became a Phone developer.”

This is a clever strategy. I haven’t touched a programming language in ages, and even I can pump something out in Visual Studio. In Microsoft’s race for apps (100K in Apple’s store vs. 1,245 in the Marketplace), this could be a key advantage for Microsoft.

Backwards compatibility

Microsoft has also yet to announce whether Windows Phone 7 Series will support apps written for 6.x. Clearly some UI changes will be necessary, but will the code run? Will there be some kind of compatibility mode? Expect to hear more about this at Mix 10.

Windows Phone 7 Series to Feature 3 Different Chassis Designs?

by dave on March 1st, 2010 / 1 Comment

Category: News

lg-win-phone-exclusive-02 Last year some smartphone specs were leaked out of Microsoft that many guessed were Microsoft’s Project Pink Chassis: a.k.a. the magical Zune Phone. Well Mary Jo Foley over at ZDnet seems to think that this Chassis was actually part of an evolving discussion at Microsoft on how to lock down their phone ecosystem so that they had fewer hardware partners that were required to adhere to much stricter specifications.

On a recent “Frankly Speaking” podcast (feb 20) the Microsoft Australia Developer Evangelist hosts Michael Kordahi and Andrew Coates discuss the three different chassis that will be available for Windows Phone 7 Series devices. Chassis 1, which was the one in circulation already, was for big, touchscreen-only devices with 1GHz processors a-la HTC HD2.

Chassis 2 phones will feature hardware keyboads – either Palm Treo-esque or of the sliding QWERTY variety – and touchscreens. Then there was Chassis 3, which they guessed might be candybar form factor.

They suggested that Chassis 1 devices would be the first out of the gates around Christmas, but offered no details on when the Chassis 2 and 3 devices might be available. We’ve already seen a prototype of the LG “Chassis 2” type design, with a sliding QWERY keyboard, so maybe we’ll see more than just Chassis 1 devices at Christmas?

The sheer variety of hardware devices available will certainly be one of the main advantages of Windows Phone 7. By locking in some rigorous hardware requirements for partners and OEM manufacturers Microsoft can ensure a consistent user experience across a broad spectrum of devices.

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