Standalone Smartphone

Microsoft is probably the company that has suffered the most since the launch of the Apple iPhone three years ago. A combination of exceptional ease of use and a highly enjoyable user interface shook up the whole industry, and as manufacturers rose to the challenge by creating new operating systems or improving old ones, it appeared that Microsoft were lagging behind.

            Windows Phone 7 Series: Get used to the name, because it is now a part of the smartphone. It may however seem loquacious but last week, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft publicly showcased Windows Phone 7 for the first time. And if the media news are anything to be believed, this is just the beginning. The phone operating system does away with pretty much every scrap of previous mobile efforts from Microsoft, from the look and feel down to the underlying code everything is brand new. The brand new, totally fresh operating system will appear in phones this year, but not until the holidays. All of the major wireless carriers and every likely hardware maker are backing it. It’s awesome. We’ve got a serious hands on for you to check out, but here is everything that you need to know:

            The nameWindows Phone 7 Series is the most ground breaking phone since the iPhone. It’s the phone Microsoft should’ve made three years ago. In the same way that the Windows 7 desktop OS was nearly everything people hoped it would be, Windows Phone 7 is almost everything anyone could’ve dreamed of in a phone, let alone a Microsoft phone. It changes everything. Why? Now that Microsoft has filled in its gaping chasm of suck with a meaningful phone effort, the three most significant companies in desktop computing Apple, Google and Microsoftnow stand to occupy the same positions in mobile. Phones are officially computers that happen to fit in your pocket.

            The OS is heavily focused on social networking, providing integrated contact pages, which show status updates from multiple services and allow fast jumps to richer cloud content such as photo galleries. The Xbox integration will include live games, avatars and profiles, while the Zune end of things appears to be a carbon copy of the standalone device’s features including FM radio. Windows Phone 7 different. The face of Windows Phone 7 is not a rectangular grid of thumbnail-sized glossy-looking icons, arranged in a pattern of 4×4 or so, like basically every other phone. No, instead, an oversized set of bright, superflat squares fill the screen. The pop of the primary colors and exaggerated flatness produces a kind of cutting-edge crispness that feels both incredibly modern and playful. Text is big, and beautiful. The result is a feat no phone has performed before: making the iPhone’s interface feel staid.

By Niharika