So, what’s up with Windows Phone 7? Luckily for us, we’re not left in the dark, since Microsoft regularly posts updated developer tools and emulator images for us to download. The latest release includes the new Microsoft Office functionality and integration, and after a little magic to unlock this functionality within the emulator image, you’ll find Microsoft has taken an interesting approach to Office on the phone.
I thoroughly disliked previous version of Microsoft Office for mobile. I have one HTC Windows Mobile device (the Artemis, if I’m not mistaken – I haven’t used it for three years) as well as an old-world PDA, an iPaq (still a powerful little monster). The mobile versions of Office on those devices were pretty horrible.
What Microsoft is showing off for Windows Phone 7, however, is pretty interesting. It follows the minimalistic black-and-white user interface style of the rest of the operating system, and comes packed with online sharing options and integration with other aspects of the mobile device. The videos below show some of it in action (yes, I’m experimenting with the colour options on YouTube – OSNews needs moar unicorns and sunshine).
This stuff could very well be the killer feature for Windows Phone 7 – at least in the business world. I don’t think any BlackBerry, Android phone, or iPhone has an Office experience quite like this one.
You can try this stuff out today using the Windows Phone 7 emulator, but most of it is locked away, and you’ll need to perform some magic first. The very first emulator image was unlocked within minutes of it being online, and since Microsoft has not done anything whatsoever to prevent it (the method has remained unchanged, despite several new releases), you can pretty much assume Microsoft doesn’t care.
Apart from the Office stuff (which was added to the previous release), this latest release also adds the phone and dialler interface, smoother transitions and effects, and of course includes a number of fixes and lower-level changes. The unlocking procedure is detailed at Egnadget, but do note that you’ll need the latest .bin file from xda-developers.
Needless to say, this only runs on Windows.
Looking awesome; although the first release of Windows Phone 7 will not include copy and paste plus others, Microsoft has promised such features in future updates. the Question is whether these updates are going to make their way on those phones that’ll ship with Windows Phone 7 or will the OEM vendors milk the customers by demanding they upgrade their handset.
This is one of the big reasons I’ve never gone for a smart phone because my experience so far has been carriers or phone vendors using their position of power to cripple old phones to force upgrades. Case in point I had a Blackberry, Vodafone were too lazy to provide DST update so I had to download an update off Optus Australia. Btw, it isn’t just limited to them; Archos has failed to provide an update to Android 1.6 even though 2.1 is in wide spread adoption by vendors – another attempt to milk more cash from customers with the, “well, if you want the latest, you gotta get a new device”.
As much as I hope for the best success for Windows Phone 7 thus push competition, I fear that hardware vendors and carriers are ultimately going to cripple the experience for the sake of making a dollar
Btw, Visual Studio 2010 is friggin awesome; if all the bad news about Apple wasn’t enough to push me away from the Mac, the improved experience of Windows 7, Visual Studio 2010 and Windows Phone 7 make it even more enticing to make the change over.
Updates will go through MS, and bypass carriers and OEMs.
I hope that it’ll lead to some non-Phone devices using it such as media players; I tend to prefer to keep my media player and phone separate.
Windows Phone 7 OS is slightly different from other Phone OSes. I like that difference, after seeing the Mobile Office video – I feel it has seemless integration to the OS. This is really awesome!! Good improvement from Microsoft.
Thanks a lot to all others Phone OS companies for pushing the microsoft to release such a good OS.
I disagree, from watchin the videos it feels a bit like keyhole surgery, i.e. you have one large virtual screen and you have to scroll back and forth all the time meaning that yu get no real overview of your application. As for integration I see nothing that couldn’t be done othe modern phone OSes
As for integration I see nothing that couldn’t be done othe modern phone OSes
Being possible to do and actually doing something are two very different things, though.
I’m just not that excited about it. Microsoft’s version of iPhone OS with all of iPhone’s initial deficiencies, and able to integrate with Office the way an iPad integrates with iWork. And, of course, you still need proprietary software to get your content to it. Yawn. Wake me up when Microsoft does something… well, interesting.
If news about operating systems bore you, perhaps you’re reading the wrong website. Let me guess, you’re the kind of person who complains at Hungry Jacks (Burger King for you US types) that they don’t serve Big Macs.
WP7 is nothing at all like the iPhone OS, except that they’re both touch screen phones with animations.
Well, prejudging people makes you look bad, not me. If that’s the extent of your response to people, perhaps you shouldn’t be commenting in a public forum.
I did not say Windows Phone 7 *was* iPhone OS, but it’s repeating most of the iPhone’s path of development. No multitasking, no cut/paste, no 3rd party applications except from Microsoft, and requires syncing software to put your content on it and to update its software. It just feels like we’re repeating the same path though with a different name and look. It’s a new coat of paint on an old jail, which is why I just don’t find wp7 interesting. I didn’t say it shouldn’t be reported, just observing that to me there’s not much new beneath the surface.
I can’t find out what protocol Microsoft uses to synchronise; if they are using ActiveSync then there is nothing stopping a Linux vendor from licensing ActiveSync from Microsoft and writing a driver to support it.
It truly is amazing when there are people who want a free ride.
Actually, we already know you will need to use Zune software to interface with it. Microsoft has said as much. What’s wanting a “free ride” about thinking I shouldn’t rely on a certain bit of software just to get content to my device, exactly? They could’ve used their own MTP protocol, which is well-supported pretty much everywhere even in their own windows media player. They could’ve used ActiveSync, see above. But they didn’t. Wmp won’t even interface with this os, and it’s their own product. Why? So you *have* to use Zune software. I’ve already dealt with that once with iTunes, I sure as hell don’t want to deal with that again no matter how good the sync software is by comparison.
Edited 2010-05-03 13:00 UTC
That is pretty depressing to be quite honest; I don’t see why they should do that but then again, there area always alternatives out there which is a good thing. For me when I make the move to the Windows world in 2011, I’ll be grabbing a MTP based media player since I prefer to keep my media player and phone separate.
Oh, and I must be one of the very few people who actually like Windows Media Player 12
I haven’t tried 12 yet as I mostly use Linux and OS X. I had a lot of problems with 11 not reading my media tags properly, e.g. it would import a lot of my files as unknown artist even though all my tags are in order and none of my music files have nonstandard headers. Even iTunes can read my music library properly and I’ve seen it go nuts at the first nonstandard mp3 header. You do have me curious though, yours is the first praise I’ve heard for wmp in a long time. I’ve heard a lot of praise for media center, but none for media player in years.
What I tend to find are those most critical of Windows Media Player 12 seem to want an all singing all dancing application that slices, dices and is a floor polisher as well. In the same breath they’ll also decry when an application becomes big, bloated and unwieldily – a matter of an end user not knowing what they actually want.
As I understand it, correct me if I am wrong, Windows Media Player has been transitioned to Media Foundation. Media Foundation is still being built up to eventually replace the spaghetti of different APIs thus as Media Foundation becomes more feature rich I’d expect Windows Media Player to become more feature rich. For me, however, at the end of the day as long as I can play music, synchronise with a player, and do some basic tag editing then that is all I am really interest in.
I’ve run iTunes at my end of the stick on Mac OS X and it is becoming big, bloated, slow and unwieldily. Nothing so far hints to Apple reversing that trend in terms of stripping off the features and modularising it. For someone like me with an iPod Classic it is a huge behemoth when one considers that all I use it for is to play music and synchronise – I use XLD for ripping and LAME for encoding my music (I avoid AAC so if at a later date I wish to move away from my iPod the transition is easier).
Edited 2010-05-03 20:50 UTC
proprietary software has a way of making itself uninteresting.
I have to day that was quite impressive. I’ve been keeping an eye out for WP7 as I like the tool chain they are using (.net/XNA/silverlight). My thing is that had the iPhone not come out something as amazing looking as WP7 would have never been possible. Ms has been forced to actually create a product that users want as a opposed to a product users have to use due to lack of alternatives. This bodes well for the company.
The UI is really impressive if not a bit odd. I actually like the minimalistic approach it makes things more readable, especially with the huge fonts. The animations aren’t overboard like I thought they would be when I first heard of the phone. MS did a lot of smart things with the design. Multitasking is probably not in the OS at the moment because they actually want to get it right. With the kind of UI paradigm they are using it makes sense for them to take their time implementing a proper multitasking workflow. Getting of legacy supprto is probably the most brilliant thing they have ever done and like the iphone they can leverage that into their desktop OS someday.
With that level of functionality built in I think Blackberry is pretty much screwed. The main reason that the iphone hasn’t surpassed RIM already is due to their lack of focus on the enterprise (and carrier exclusivity). Something like WP7 can do most of what a Blackberry can, has more functionality out of the box, and by default integrates well with Exchange.
Is there any word yet about how to manage these devices? Will MS release some sort of enterprise configuration tool? Perhaps as an add-on to WS?