Microsoft attracts developers to new Windows Phone 7
Microsoft has released beta versions of the Windows Phone developer tools, hoping to attract developers in the same way that that the iPhone and Android has.
05 August 2010
Steve Ballmer recently admitted that Microsoft had goofed with its phone strategy, saying that they had lost a whole generation of customers. After ridiculing the iPhone because it had no keyboard, it must have been galling to see it become one of the best selling phones ever.
Microsoft doesn't like to lose: and Windows Phone 7 (due out in October) is clear evidence of the company fighting back.
One of the reasons that current and previous Windows phones didn't really cut it was - well, Windows itself. The mobile device operating system was clunky, too much like a desktop OS - and way too complicated to configure for most people. Plus, it wasn't that reliable either, with many users having to reboot frequently.
Well, Windows Phone 7 jettisons all of that baggage and romps home as a modern, slick, fast and innovative mobile phone operating system.
The visual design is codenamed 'Metro' - and steals a little of its look and feel from both the Zune and the Xbox. Unlike the iPhone, Windows Phone 7 is going to be seen on a wide range of devices - some with keyboards and some without. In addition, phones are likely to have a start button (to launch applications etc), a search button and a back button.
The user interface exploits capacitive touch screens, so it can be used entirely without a keyboard - other than a virtual one on the screen.
The interface itself doesn't consist of 'apps' in the sense that we understand them from the iPhone and Android - it displays 'tiles'. How are these different from apps? Well, a core philosophy in Windows Phone 7 is data aggregation - pulling things together from more than one place. When you take that approach, an app seems a clunky way to do things.
As an example - the people tile (or hub) pulls together contact information from various sources and puts it in one place. So, your business contacts from your Exchange Server, your personal e-mail contacts from Facebook and Hotmail (or whatever) are all combined into one feed - that displays (amongst other things) what people are doing now, by taking information from social networking sites. The calendar pulls information from your workplace (Exchange Server) and combines it with your local, home calendar. Lots of the tiles take the same 'mixing data' approach - and it is very effective.
It's a really nice piece of application design that shows Microsoft can still innovate.
Other tiles take the same approach - so your e-mail tile takes e-mails from multiple accounts and massages them seamlessly together. Pictures are combined from your phone, computer, Facebook and other social networking sites into one tile. It's simple and effective.
At the bottom of the screen is the App Bar - which displays your most commonly used apps. Touching this expands it so you can see more apps.
The search facility works very well too. It's contextual - so if you are in your people tile, then it will search and display results in the way that works best for contact information. If you search from the main screen, it will search the Web as well as locally - depending on what you search for. As an example, if you search for 'pizza' it will use your location information to understand where you are, then search Bing for pizza parlours close to you. The information isn't displayed as a standard Web page - it's pulled into a friendly interface that looks like the rest of Windows Phone 7. From there, you can click on the phone number to order a pizza, or, if you click on the location button, you'll be taken to a map. You can even click to find other relevant things nearby - in this case, that might include ATMs. It's very powerful and makes good on the promise of Bing being a 'results engine' not a search engine.
Synchronisation is done automatically using the Exchange Data Sync. This means that your device updates itself all the time from sources which support that protocol. Back on your PC, you use the Zune software to synchronise data from your hard drives.
So we like the phone. What about apps? The iPhone App Store has been a key part of the device's success - cheap apps that can be downloaded quickly and installed without fuss.
Microsoft is taking a similar approach and has just made available the beta version of its Windows Phone 7 development tools. These include:
- Visual Studio Express for Windows
- Windows Phone Emulator
- Silverlight for Windows Phone
- Microsoft Expression Blend for Windows Phone
- XNA Game Studio
You'll need Vista or Windows 7 to run this, 2GB of RAM and 3GB of hard disc space.
For developers who have some familiarity with other versions of these tools, Windows Phone 7 presents an excellent opportunity to get into the lucrative apps market. The phone definitely looks good and although Microsoft may have taken a spanking from Apple and Google, it looks like they are coming back with a fantastic product and could get themselves back into the game.
You can download the Windows Phone 7 development tools from Microsoft's website.
