Hats off to Microsoft -- a company that many of us had written off in the mobile phone market has come up trumps with a new operating system and fresh approach to the mobile platform that could -- for the first time in a very long time -- give Apple and Google something to worry about.
Windows Phone 7 Series is a horribly clunky name for this software platform, but almost everything else about it is slick, well designed and refreshingly different.
Forget everything you’ve known about Windows mobile phones until this point -- the infuriating menu system, the uninspiring design, the endless bugs; the new-look Windows Phone makes all of that seem like a bad dream.
Seven, joked Microsoft’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, might just be the company’s lucky number -- much in the same way Windows 7 exorcised the ghost of Vista, so too could Windows Phone 7 reignite Microsoft’s ambitions in the mobile space.
The new Windows Phone interface draws heavily on that of the Zune, the Microsoft personal media player that has never made it to this side of the Atlantic. Rather than the flat, regimented icons of old, the new Windows Phone interface has big, bold, over-sized graphics that bleed off the screen and dominate the page, and the whole navigation system feels fresh and lively.
Microsoft said that phone makers had to stop building devices that looked and felt like pocket PCs. That doesn’t quite explain why the home screen in Windows Phone is known as the “Start” screen, but nonetheless the “Live Tiles” interface provides a neat way of accessing all of your important contacts and data.
In a welcome move, Microsoft has fallen out of love with its information silos, and has instead created “hubs” around which relevant data is clustered.
The People hub, for instance, provides one-click access to all your contacts, pulled from across the web and arranged in a notional order of “importance”, from those friends and family you interact with most appearing further up the page, and those you contact infrequently pushed down the virtual pecking order. You can even make specific “tiles” for your favourite people.
It’s a dynamic, personalised user experience that will change over time, in real time, depending on the ebb and flow of your daily interactions. There’s even a “What’s New” section, which pulls in social-networking updates from your contacts, straight from sites such as Facebook. There’s no Twitter support yet -- a glaring omission -- but expect this to be rectified by the time the first Windows Phones launch at the end of the year.
News Source:- http://www.telegraph.co.uk
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