Microsoft released the first Windows Phone 7 emulator a few weeks ago, and that was enough to give people a good idea of how the operating system will look. But the emulator was designed to run on a PC with an x86 processor, so there was no way to install it on an ARM-based phone or really dissect the way it will work with mobile… Read more »

I have to admit, while I never got used to writing “Windows Phone 7 Series, I’ve grown kind of fond of the acronym “WP7S.” But I’m still glad to see that Microsoft realized that the name was too long, confusing, and difficult to say. According to a message on Twitter from the Windows Phone team, Microsoft is dropping the “Series” from the name of the… Read more »

Microsoft has already stated that no phone currently on the market will be upgradeable to Windows Phone 7 Series because they don’t met the hardware requirements. But in the case of the HTC HD2, the only thing that’s missing is a dedicated hardware button or Bing searches. The processor, screen resolution, and pretty much everything else are more than good enough — and now a… Read more »

We’ve already looked at how to install a theme on your Windows Mobile phone to give it a Windows Phone 7 Series look in advance of the launch of Microsoft’s next-gen mobile operating system. But here’s a way to get just part of that look. You can install a set of icons inspired by the Windows Phone 7 Series “Metro” user interface. The icon set… Read more »

Microsoft released developer tools for Windows Phone 7 Series a few days ago, complete with an emulator that you could use to test out new apps designed for the platform. But if you downloaded the emulator (which was built into Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone), you may have noticed that it didn’t really provide the full WP7S experience. In fact, out of the box,… Read more »

Wow. So Microsoft really has decided to just copy a half dozen pages out of Apple’s playbook for Windows Phone 7 Series. The latest development? Windows Phone 7 Series won’t support copy and paste functionality at launch — even though it’s something that Windows CE-based PDAs and phones have been doing for the last 10 years. And even though Apple launched the iPhone without copy/paste… Read more »

Yesterday Microsoft released a series of developer tools for Windows Phone 7 Series… including an emulator. And one of the intrepid hackers at xda-developers figured out how to extract the emulator image, which is now available for download as a standalone file. But while this file will give you a peek at the source code for Windows Phone 7 Series, it’s worth noting that this… Read more »

Wow. After spending all afternoon geeking out over the cool new features that will be available in Windows Phone 7 Series, I think I’m starting to come down a bit. And that’s largely due to a report that explains that Microsoft is taking an Apple-like approach to its next-gen mobile operating system… possibly in some of the worst possible ways. Not only will the Windows… Read more »

On the one hand, the new Windows Phone Marketplace looks awfully cool. On the other hand it looks like it’s going to kill one of the things that really set Windows Mobile apart from the iPhone: The ability to install any old application on your phone after finding it on the web. Microsoft officially introduced the new version of the Windows Phone Marketplace that will… Read more »

Microsoft is expected to launch Windows Phone 7 Series later this year. And when it does, there will be third party applications available from some major players in the mobile space, including Pandora, Fandango, Foursquare, EA Mobile, the Associated Press, Seesmic, Shazam, and Sling. Of course, all of those companies have apps for other platforms including iPhone and Android, so these apps are hardly going… Read more »