At last, one of the most awaited Windows Phone 7 has been launched officially in the MWC. Eager to know if what we heard till now were true and how the new mobile OS from Microsoft stands up against the newly risen kings?

First of all, Microsoft is trying to dump Windows Mobile. Yes, not the platform itself but just the name and they’re all set with the new branding “Windows Phone 7 Series”. Seriously, Seven seems to be a magic number in bringing success for them as we could imagine it after what Windows 7 bought for them.

Then, there were some rumors on the Zune phone while actually Microsoft did make a Zune HD phone and named it the Windows Phone 7 Series instead. That is what we could say about this new mobile OS in a single line.

Seriously, it has some nice features especially the home screen with tiles that work like separate application on their own to bring you status updates and keep you connected with all possible information that you will be interested in.

User Interface
The Windows Mobile 7’s user interface is adopted from the Zune HD with text based pivot styled menus and bold fonts and colors. Zune actually borrowed a lot of it’s interface from Windows Media Center actually and this time the same interface shared by the Xbox, Media Center, Zune and Windows Mobile makes us feel all of them in one family.

The on-screen menus and the browser are also similar to the Zune HD. We could say that you will have an entire Zune experience with a phone added to it. The e-mailing and all other business or corporate function has been made simple and faster. Even the calendar application has high similarities with the one found in Zune HD player.

The new Home Screen
The Windows Phone 7 is build up on 6 hubs or what Microsoft calls them as ‘Tiles’ – People, Pictures, Games, Music + Video, Marketplace and Office. Here you can see what all are the six hubs in the Windows Phone 7 will allow you.

People: It helps you to give a new experience in social networking and to bring any people to you with their live feeds and photos from social networks and acts as a centre from where you can post updates on FaceBook and Windows Live in not more than a single step.

Pictures: This hub will help you in sharing images and videos to a social network like FaceBook and bringing any users photos together by integrating with Web and PC and thud your phone will become a place to see a person’s collection of videos and pictures.

Games: The Windows Phone 7’s Games hub allows you to play the XBOX Live games to compete against over 23 million active members of the XBOX Live and making friendship with them through the interactions. The 7 Series from Windows Phone is the first and only phone which allows you this.

Music and Video: The Zune HD experience is brought to you by this hub by offering you the best of the Zune that too from a user’s PC, online music services and FM Radio. Also the users are allowed to share their videos and music through the Zune Social on your PC and you can share the recommended music with like-minded ones.

Marketplace: This hub offers you the finding and installing of the certified games and applications.

Office: For reading, editing and sharing the documents you can make use of this hub by accessing Office, OneNote, SharePoint, and Workspace. With the Outlook Mobile you are allowed to stay productive and up to date while on the go.

Sharing and Syncing
So there will be no more Active Sync or Windows Mobile Device Center and the Zune software is said to handle all the syncing. The Zune Desktop software ensures the syncing of not just the multimedia but all the other 6 hubs that is used to build up the phone are allowed to sync.

Software and Apps
With the new interface, it is very unlikely to see many softwares focused on business usage as the good old Windows Mobile OS used to handle. Now it is more like a multi media centric device rather than an enterprise platform where you can work and play together. So in the aim of bringing rich multimedia experience to a phone as demanded by much of the consumers, Microsoft has dropped a lot of flexibility and capabilities of what Windows Mobile could do.

At the moment there is no much info on third party software development. Of course the Phone supports it but more details on how far or the extent of possibilities in developing softwares and SDK details are reserved for announcements in the next month at MIX conference.

Xbox Live Experience
Another surprise along with many other about the Windows Phone 7 is the add-on of the XBOX Live Game hub. Till now a mobile owner has not taken any serious care of gaming o their phones because of bad graphics and they saw them as just time wasting options. Instead of their mobiles they chose Desktop PC, Play Station etc. for playing games as an entertaining media. Now they will have to choose from the mobile technology also as Microsoft had announced that XBOX Live gaming has been included in the Windows Phone 7.

When XBOX Live comes to WM 7, it will be the first and only official XBOX Live experience on a phone, including XBOX Live games, Spotlight feed and the ability to see a gamers’ avatar, achievements and gamer profile. Also the more than 23 million active members around the world, it unlocks a world of friends, games and entertainment on XBOX 360 and now also on Windows Mobile 7 Series.

New, Rich, Lock Screen
When coming to the lock screen we can see a neat one which has many influences of the Zune HD as in the case of other UI also. The usual notifications on the screen like SMS, new e-mail, missed calls and of course the date and the time are seen. You just need to slide up for the Start Screen and don’t forget you will have no more Today Screen. The weather, next appointment would also be seen and some other ways to customize the screen also would have been added.

A video has been added below to show the Windows Phone 7 in action, and after watching that you will get how much the Zune HD has influenced, like almost everything from the animations to the Operating System navigation is adopted from Zune HD. Another feature you will notice from the video below is the integrated voice search option, which will help you in finding the information without giving any work to your fingers.

A video which is hosted by Laura Foy and the tour is given by the Corporate Vice President of Windows Phone will show you show and detail you about the six hubs included in the Windows Phone 7 Series

Now we shall discuss something about the cool capacitive touch screen on the Windows Phone 7 Series. About last ten years the keyboard of a windows mobile have not been changed and now when it comes to the 7 Series, it is changed, and why not it should be because it is the most talked and worked phone by Microsoft. Keyboard on WM 7 Series is somewhat similar to the one in the Zune HD but much more improved. The keyboard has two cool features and one of them is the auto correction. The auto correct is similar to which one you will find in a full computer. When you spell a word incorrect and if you tap on it, on the top of the keyboard you will get the suggestions for the correction and you tap on the correct word it will be replaced.

The second feature of the 7 Series keyboard is that you will be shown a full emoticon keyboard which will allow you to smile and smirk easily when you are updating your Twitter or FaceBook status.

We have informed you earlier that Multi tasking feature has been removed from the Windows Phone 7 and now you can be happy that multi tasking will work here too. For example, when you are playing music you can navigate around the experience and if you are using e-mail, there is an option for push e-mail which will run behind. But the fact is that, like the earlier versions of Windows Mobile, a complete multitasking will not be offered here. If the earlier versions of the WM were business minded, this time they have decided to go with the consumer needs by making the complete OS more user friendly. It is expected that the switching options will be more or less like, that, in the iPhone. Like go to the Home screen, swipe right to open the program launcher and then open the app you want.

The Marketplace in the Windows Phone 7 Series is completely independent of that from the WM 6.5 and the apps of the earlier versions including WM 6.5 will not work on the 7 Series. As we said above the inspiration of Zune HD has continued to the Marketplace too. The screenshots shows us that the first screen has been saved by Microsoft to feature an application and from there you can split to apps, music, games and podcasts.

Now another video has been attached to show you the design philosophy for the interface of Windows Phone 7 Series explained by Albert Shum, Director of Mobile Experience Design at Microsoft. The main thing which has been repeated several times in the video is that the interface has been WM 7 Series has been designed with the user in mind and has made customizable as much as possible for the interaction of the people with their technologies.

Altogether friends this is Windows Phone 7 Series which has been organized into 6 hubs i.e. People, Pictures, Games, Music/video, Marketplace and Office. These six hubs work together and give us the information that are scattered in different places. The user interface has been made more user friendly than that in the earlier versions and that will attract those who were keenly looking on to the dream project from Microsoft and the Zune HD like interface which is received whole hearted will be a great plus to the Windows Phone 7 Series even though some of them will find it as a downside of the phone.

Bottom-line: We expected Windows Mobile 7 to be provide a richer and delightful user interface while still having the old flexibilities and enterprise features of the older version of Windows Mobile OS but Microsoft has delivered nothing but another Zune HD with some phone features added to it. Quite disappointing only.

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