Photo: Microsoft Corp.
We've now glimpsed the first phones to run on Windows Phone 7, Microsoft's new mobile operating system. Both the phones and the OS appear competent enough, even if they break no new ground.
The six new smart phones, unveiled yesterday at a press event I attended in New York, will begin hitting the market in November, with some launches stretching to mid 2011. Made by HTC, Samsung, and LG, the phones will be available on either AT&T or T-Mobile for about $200, excepting one that will be on Sprint for an undisclosed price. Notable by its absence was any WP7 phone on Verizon.
The new operating system's collage-like interface borrows heavily from the ones on the Zune HD media player and the recently deceased Kin phones. Instead of icons, the main screen consists of customizable Live Tiles, which, like widgets, show real-time updates from the Web such as news, appointments, and feeds from social networks such as Facebook. The phones will come preloaded with Xbox LIVE, Microsoft Office Mobile, Zune, Windows Live, and the Bing search engine and Maps. The built-in Zune interface allows users to sync their multimedia content wirelessly from a PC or stream or download new tunes from Windows Marketplace.
In addition to the touch screen, three buttons provide the core navigation controls. There's a Back button for backing out of applications, a Start button for returning you to the home screen, and a Search button that launches the Bing search box. Alerts appear on a status bar at the uppermost portion of the display, which can be pulled down like a window shade (just like the one on Android phones) to reveal more details and allow you to launch the appropriate application.
All WP7 phones have 800- by 480-resolution touch-screen displays, a camera of at least 5 megapixels with Flash and the ability to shoot HD video (720 frames per second), a 1-GHz Snapdragon processor, and support for voice-based searches and commands. None have HDMI ports for connecting to an HDTV, and none allow you tether your laptop to them for Internet access over their data networks.
Each phone is expected to cost around $200 with a two-year contract. Here's a rundown on the six headed for the U.S. market, with highlights of what they have to offer:
Dell Venue Pro (T-Mobile). Ignoring its past failures at selling non-computer products, including smart phones, Dell will be the exclusive seller of the HTC-made Venue Pro, which has a 4.1-inch AMOLED display made of tough Gorilla Glass. It measures 121.6 by 64.4 by 14.9 mm and has a slide-out keyboard that's a bit on the narrow side. It also has 8GB of internal storage.
HTC HD7 (T-Mobile). Based on the high-scoring HD2 in our Ratings, the HTC HD7 boasts a gargantuan 4.3-inch screen and supports surround sound for music, video, and gaming. A hinged protective bezel over the camera acts as a kickstand for the phone when you flip it open.
HTC Surround (AT&T). This is another kickstand model, with a slide-out Yamaha speaker. As the name implies, it supports surround sound. The Surround measures 4.71 by 2.42 by 0.51 inches and has a 3.6-inch touch screen; it comes with 16GB of internal storage.
LG Quantum (AT&T). The LG Quantum has a laterally opening QWERTY keyboard and is the only phone of this first batch of phones to support text to speech and DLNA, a standard that allows the phone to beam its multimedia to a compatible HDTV. Measuring 119.5 by 59.5 by 15.22 mm, it's among the thickest Windows Phone 7 phones, though its 3.5-in. screen is the smallest.
Samsung Focus (AT&T). This phone has the same 4.0-inch Super AMOLED display found on the high-scoring Galaxy S phones in our Ratings. The camera is also among the more advanced, packing such features as panorama, smile detection, Lomo mode, Add Me, and BeautyShot. The phone itself is on the slim side, measuring 4.82 by 2.53 by 0.43 inches, and comes with 8GB of internal storage.
HTC 7 Pro (Sprint). This is the only Windows Phone 7 CDMA phone and is scheduled to debut in the first half of 2011. It has a full QWERTY keyboard and a 3.6-inch display that tilts slightly up so that you can set the phone down on a desktop and type on it. That feature makes the phone a chunky 0.61 inches thick, though its other dimensions are a palm-friendly 4.63 by 2.32 inches.
Bottom line: Windows Phone 7 is promising enough, yet much the same was said about past Windows mobile OSes—and those gained little traction against the likes of iPhone and Blackberry. My jury (of one) is still out on this new platform until I and our testers get our hands on these phones over the coming weeks, and until the breadth and quality of WP7 apps and services becomes clearer.
–Mike Gikas
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