Microsoft announces Windows Mobile 7: Windows Phone 7 series

Windows Mobile has been in need for a massive overhaul recently, and today at Mobile World Congress it got that overhaul.With a complete make over, Windows Phone is coming back to blow the competition away.

What changed

This is the largest and ambitious overhaul Microsoft has ever done. From now on Microsoft will drop the Windows Mobile name and go for Windows phone, which started after the release of Windows Mobile 6.5. Now, every single thing about Windows Phone 7 Series is different, it has gone away from trying to bring the Windows desktop experience as it did in the early 2000's, doing away with skins also like Sense on HTC phones, and TouchWiz on Samsung phones. So this means carriers  like Verizon can not change anything on 7 Series, since every phone running it will be the same verison.  Though, all phones that run 7 Series have to have specific technical specifications.

Whats new

Windows Phone 7 Series is a whole new interface, taking cues from the Zune interface as seen on the ZuneHD. 7 Series has gone away with the today screen in favor of the new tiles interface, which act more like widgets. Each tile will display updates from social networking services, and other updates such as missed calls and test messages. Speaking of social networking, hold on to your seats Xbox Live fans, 7 series has INTEGRATION of Xbox Live. The integration includes profiles, games, and avatars. 7 Series also will have updates from other social networking platforms, thought it has not been said which services will be integrated. Another Microsoft service that will be integrated will be Zune services, which includes many of the Zune HD features.

Availability

Microsoft has said the first handsets with 7 series will be available around the holidays. Though so far, it is known that the HTC HD2 will get an update for 7 Series, which sounds beliveable since T-Mobile USA is a carrier partner. So far these carriers have partnered with Microsoft on 7 Series: AT&T, Deutsche Telekom AG (T-Mobile Europe) , Orange, SFR, Sprint, Telecom Italia (TIM), Telefónica(O2), Telstra, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone. So far Dell, Garmin-Asus, HTC, HP, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Qualcomm have partnered as a hardware partner.