Microsoft Reveals 9 New Windows Phones

Dateline: October 11, 2010 – Worldwide

 

Microsoft today joined partners in revealing 9 new Windows Phone 7 handsets that will be available very soon from leading mobile providers in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia.

I for one, am ready to burst.  I will be at the Boston Windows Phone 7 Firestarter both days, and am eager to show and tell about these phones: what a blast!

 

Q&A

Q: Okay, I’m ready now to get started learning, what do I do?

A:  First get all the tools: they’re free.  You can find out where and how and what hardware you need here.

Second, there is a great deal of material on learning Windows Phone 7. You may want to start with one of my tutorial series:

Windows Phone Programming For Silverlight Developers

An iPhone Developer’s Guide to Windows Phone 7 Programming

 

Q: What is the difference between the previous generation of Windows Phone and Windows Phone 7?

A: Windows Phone 7 is a clean break from the past – from the UI to the development platform: Silverlight and Xna.

Q: When will the device be available for consumers?

A: Windows Phone 7 will be available for purchase on this holiday season

Q: What are you doing to help developers create apps for Windows Phone 7?

A: We will be providing comprehensive educational materials, community support, arguably the very best developer tools, an open, transparent, reliable marketplace program and an underlying application platform which fosters the accelerated development of tightly integrated applications and games.

Q: Why do I need to write my applications in managed code? Won’t I be at a disadvantage to 1st party native code apps, performance-wise?
A: Windows Phone 7 delivers an all managed code platform in order to provide developers with an easier and faster way to build high quality applications that are highly performant.  The performance is excellent in part because Silverlight and XNA Framework support  exceptional access to hardware accelerated graphics and video streaming.

Q: Will Windows Phone Marketplace for Windows Phone 7 offer line of business apps?

Yes. If you write a line of business application and it passes the certification process, it can be included in the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Q: Where will the initial MarketPlace offering be available?

The Windows Phone Marketplace will initially support the buying and selling of applications in 17 countries; Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, UK and United States.

Q: Have you fixed copy and paste?

A: Windows Phone 7 will not initially offer copy and paste. However, we try to solve the most common uses for copy and paste via single-tap action. For example, people often want to take an address and view it on a map, highlight a term in the browser and do a search or copy a phone number to make a call. We recognize those situations automatically and make them happen with just one touch.

Q: Does Windows Phone 7 have an integrated IM or messenger service?

A: WP7 will include Messenger by Miyowa and will include all the functionality you would expect in Windows Live; multi-person chat, pivot, presence, emoticons and update status, etc.

Q: Will there be local search?

A: Windows Phone 7 will initially support local search in the US and UK.

Q: Will you push updates to end users?

A: Yes.

Q: What Enterprise support is provided?

A:   Exchange email, calendar and contacts experience, full access to documents on SharePoint sites and rich viewing and editing of Microsoft Office documents such as optimized mobile navigation in Word and editing in PowerPoint.

About Jesse Liberty

Jesse Liberty has three decades of experience writing and delivering software projects and is the author of 2 dozen books and a couple dozen online courses. His latest book, Building APIs with .NET will be released early in 2025. Liberty is a Senior SW Engineer for CNH and he was a Senior Technical Evangelist for Microsoft, a Distinguished Software Engineer for AT&T, a VP for Information Services for Citibank and a Software Architect for PBS. He is a Microsoft MVP.
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