Windows 7 Phone : Review

The biggest revolution in the Microsoft’s current mobile operating system has arrived and has fallen from grace. The entire OS has been redone and the old Windows applications won’t work. It is a successor of the Window’s mobile operating system.
HARDWARE:
We haven’t seen the retail-quality device till now and both LG and Samsung have came up with their respective prototypes and we might see them on the store shelves this year.
Company is laying down the ground rules and making an attempt to compose more consistent experience across phones, but it doesn’t mean that there won’t be any variety. There will be different features for different devices like hardware keyboards, and front facing cameras but there will be a steady tone in the nature of windows phone 7 handsets.
Let’s see the detailed specs given so far:
Only large 800 x 480 (WVGA) touchscreen will be permitted at first, but later 480 x 320 (HVGA) will make an appearance.
Five specific hardware buttons are there: Start, back, search, camera button and power.
A Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU with DirectX 9 support and it is well said that the platform is well flexible to expand to other cjips in the future.
256 MB of RAM or more.
8GB of internal flash storage or more.
No support for the micro SD cards.
Wi-Fi.
AGPS.
Accelerometer.
FM radio.
5 megapixel camera or better with flash.
It has 3.7 inch capacitive touchscreen with a front face camera.
SOFTWARE:
So what’s the difference between Windows phone 7 and the previous Windows mobile? Basically, every interface patterns we have seen in previous versions are wiped out here and the design has been utterly destroyed in a nice way.
There are no more start menu, drop downs, check boxes, radio buttons, windows, and list of icons….and we can go on and on. Microsoft has worked on developing new ways to navigate a phone, and there are no icon grids, no task manager and no card view.
Windows have come up with a UI concept called “Metro”. Lots of minimal, negative space and primary colours, it is a type-and-motion heavy interface.
There are two themes present for the OS i.e., light text on black screen or black text on white screen and have a choice of picking four colours: red, orange, blue and green.
The unlock screen is somehow similar to Zune’s and a photo has to dragged upwards to unlock the screen, though it also includes date, time, upcoming calendar items, number of unread messages and number of missed calls.
There is a Start screen which is made up of movable “tiles” in a narrow strip down to the middle of the screen in sets of two across, or longer single tiles.
Tiles are animated and live and there is a change always which comes in the form of status updates from friends, new photos, new messages and so forth.
All new touchscreen keyword is present but with an important auto-correction.
MULTITASKING:
Media/e-mail sync is the built-in applications and the browser can run in the background.
It supports “page states” which are like cookies on websites. When the app is navigated away from the screen, the page state is committed to memory and when it is needed again the UI is reconstructed from the state.
Microsoft will offer a service named Microsoft notification service which will push app notifications to devices without the app needed to open. This notification will appear on the top of the phone that can be tapped to take you to that application.
Copy and paste feature is notably missing and is a big disappointment.
HUBS AND FIRST PARTY HUBS
PEOPLE HUB:
It takes contacts from Gmail, exchange, Facebook, twitter, Windows live and others, aggregating contact information and status updates in a single view.
PICTURES HUB:
Take updated images and the pictures gallery from the Facebook, twitter and others. It also allows updating and making comment on the photos of yours in Facebook and other social networking sites. Pictures applications plug-in are also offered to edit the pictures as well as sharing it.
The main view of this hub keeps yours recently contacted people in the first view dynamically and allows to jump to any of yours recent feeds and updates.
GAMES HUB:
It integrates with Xbox live. It allows browsing gamer profiles and spotlight feeds and Xbox live and achievements. Microsoft had said that they want games which are easy to play in “minute mobile” and are focusing on turned–based games to start but we have seen few 3D XNA games shown off, which are filled with X box achievements and other features from live.
MUSIC + VIDEO HUB:
It’s a Zune HD in your phone. You will be able to access Zune pass here also and can download and browse music over Wi-Fi and 3G.
These are some apps and games that are demoed so far:
ASSOCIATED PRESS.
It makes full use of panorama view and gives you a different experience which can find on the Androids and iPhone versions. There is a nifty browsing tool that flips out images in a fan.
HUSH HUSH.
It is a diary application which almost looks like a diary and it functions very well on the large WVGA displays.
MLS.
With the cooperation of major league soccer it is an official application developed. All the statistics, reviews and updates are given of your favorite teams in major league soccer.
GOO SPLAT, BATTLE PUNKS, And THE HARVEST.
These games are from different backgrounds. Goo splat is an XNA game on Zune HD while the other two are the 3D games capable of showing off Xbox live integration.