Nothing gets you going quite like a good old fashioned leak! It comes in the form of a list of leaked HTC codenames from ROM hacker extrodinaire 'Conflipper'. The story goes that Conflipper is calling it a day in terms of Windows Phone modding and as such he's posted up HTC's codenames for their forthcoming Windows Phone 7 handsets. Conflipper's site, Shipped-ROMS, will no longer be updated and will effectively cease operations although it will remain up and running in its present form for users to access. This came about at the request of HTC who sent a cease & desist letter in the mould of other manufacturers who don't seem to realise the enormous benefit that modding sites and communities bring to their brands.

The list of devices includes Salsa, Motion, Maestro, Swing, Blitz, Sage, Tango, and Vienna. Admittedly the codenames sound like a combination between an evening of dancing  and kids' cartoon characters, but nevertheless it's an exciting list. Mozart has already been confirmed as a Windows Phone 7 device from HTC and ties in nicely with the musical/dance theme we see here. There isn't a massive amount of information available on each handset, but here's what's being bandied around at the moment:

• Maestro - global handset supporting both GSM & CDMA
• Swing, Salsa & Vienna - GSM handsets
• Swing#C, Salsa#C & Vienna#C - CDMA handsets

Of course some, or even all, of these handsets might not make it to market, but they are apparently all current codenames of handsets that are at the very least in the planning stage. It also demonstrate that Windows Phone 7 won't just be a one trick pny for HTC, they look to be embracing it as widely as they have done with Android and Windows Mobile in the past.

Microsoft confirms Windows Phone 7 manufacturers: ASUS, Dell, HTC, LG, and Samsung

 

 

 

Microsoft is no stranger to having partners galore in the phone business, but its lineup of manufacturers for the upcoming, surprisingly promising Windows Phone 7 launch is no less impressive. After plenty of rumoring, Microsoft has confirmed that Dell and HTC will be making Windows Phone 7 phones, in addition to ASUS, LG, and Samsung who had already been confirmed. All of these companies should have their stamp on hardware by the end of the year, with the launch of the OS still vaguely slated for the "holidays" We have no doubt that all five manufacturers can build some compelling, sexy hardware, but we're particularly enthused to see Dell really getting into the game after the impressive Streak and that drool worthy leak a little while back.

 

Microsoft to employees: "Everybody gets a Windows Phone 7!"

Microsoft guru extraordinaire Mary Jo Foley has retweeted a company employee boasting of a commitment to hand out Windows Phone 7 devices to each and every one of Redmond's 90,000-plus employees around the world. That's certainly one way to spread the word and realistically, the cost to Microsoft is a drop in the bucket if they can really take advantage of the word of mouth advertising effect here. Of course, step one in that process is going to be making sure the product is absolutely rock solid by the time those gratis units start getting handed out. 

The newer and less popular Silverlight, which is Microsoft alternative to Flash, is spreading to mobile OSes too the Symbian^1 version just became available in the Ovi Store.

Silverlight has been available for Windows Mobile for a while now (of course, Microsoft's plug-in for Microsoft's OS) but now it’s also available on a non-Redmond platform. You can download Silverlight for Symbian^1 (or S60 5th edition if you will) from here.

The Silverlight plug-in integrates into the S60 browser and helps run Silverlight content inside the browser. Silverlight also enables installable apps – and since Silverlight uses .NET languages, there’s already a big potential developer base. Dev tools for Silverlight for Symbian can be downloaded by following the link.

There’s no word if Silverlight will be available on iOS (easy guess – when hell freezes over), or Android (2.2 Froyo enabled Flash, so maybe 3.0 Gingerbread?), but interestingly there will be Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 – it just won’t run in the browser, or at least not at first. That’s an odd decision by Microsoft.

And so ends Microsoft's brief spell as a phone manufacturer. The company has just announced that it's terminating its KIN line and focusing all of its resources on the development of their upcoming Windows Phone 7 OS.

 

Here comes the official statement:

"Microsoft has made the decision to focus on the Windows Phone 7 launch and will not ship KIN in Europe this fall as planned. Additionally, we are integrating our KIN team with the Windows Phone 7 team, incorporating valuable ideas and technologies from KIN into future Windows Phone releases. We will continue to work with Verizon in the U.S. to sell current KIN phones."

So the KIN duo never lived to see it GSM-supporting versions become available. It only made it to Verizon's CDMA network in the US (where it has been available for just under two months), but its sales didn't even reach 10 000 units milestone.

After that and the universally negative reviews that the KIN handsets got after their release it's hardly a surprise that Microsoft decided to give up on it. When you spend so much time and effort (and mostly so much money) and you end up with a product often described as one of the biggest flops in history, simply giving up seems the right thing to do.

Trying to bring the project back on the right track would be a really demanding task (if at all possible with so much catching up to do) and Microsoft simply cannot afford to waste resources on it. Not with the Windows Mobile OS market share dropping into irrelevance and its future hanging by a thread.

With the fierce competition from Android and iOS, Windows Phone 7 has to be (close to) perfect to regain some of the past glory of the Microsoft smartphone platforms. So if dropping the KINs is what needs to be done to make it perfect, we wholeheartedly support the Redmond-based company on this decision.

Source

With the Kin duo now gone for good, and the WinMo 6.5 market share bordering on insignificance, Microsoft have all their eggs in one WP7 basket. As it seems though they will do everything they can to make sure they stay on the smartphone market. Today they revealed more information about theWindows Phone 7 synchronization and remote access capabilities and those certainly look impressive.

Much like the just announced BlackBerry Protect, Windows Phone 7 will get you the full suite of services you'll need in case your phone gets stolen or lost. You get remote wipe so you can protect your valuable private information, plus you can locate your device wirelessly and hopefully get it back. A remotely activated ringer is also available to help you find the phone if you have misplaced it. Maybe Windows Phone 7 isn't quite as useful when you lose your phone as the recently announced BlackBerry Protect, but it still does a pretty great job at it.

Besides it will offer another valuable feature that should give it an edge against its competitors. Windows Phone 7 will support offer synchronization between all your Microsoft devices (those being your Windows PC, your Xbox and, of course, your smartphone). You can transfer everything from contacts to OneNote entries and images, allowing you to continue where you left off each time you alternate those gadgets. Cool right?

Microsoft are joining the high-end smartphone market with competition at its highest, but they sure as hell won't give up without a fight.

 

After Windows Phone 7's grand unveiling at Barcelona's Mobile World Congress last month, Microsoft has circled back during GDC and its own MIX10 conference to fill in many of the holes in this story -- in particular, details around the app development ecosystem and how third parties can take full advantage of it have been focal points. Of course, it makes sense: a modern smartphone is only as good as its software catalog, and Redmond's clearly keen to show that it knows how very true that is. XNA -- the technology that underpins Zune games and a host of Xbox content -- figures prominently into the equation, but Silverlight is a huge, unavoidable component as well, making development for WP7 devices a starkly different experience for studios and independent code monkeys than in versions prior. We're going to be periodically updating this post as we get new info on the platform, but for now, follow the break for everything you need to know -- so far -- about Microsoft's latest and greatest mobile platform. 

 

 

Windows Phone 7 is the successor to Microsoft's line of Windows Mobile phone operating systems. It's based on the Windows CE 6 kernel, like the Zune HD, while current versions of Windows Mobile are based on Windows CE 5. Microsoft announced the new OS at Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona, and says that the first handsets to run it are supposed to be released by the holiday shopping season of this year -- and the company is emphatic in saying that it doesn't mean December 24th -- you'll have time to place your order.

The visual and underlying differences in the operating system are almost too numerous to mention, including a completely (and we do mean completely) upended user interface, an emphasis on finger-based touchscreen input, deep social networking integration, fully branded and expansive Zune and Xbox components, and extremely strict hardware requirements for partners. A couple familiar touchstones from the past include plans for Outlook and Office support, as well as licensing to a wide variety of third party hardware vendors -- despite the name change, Microsoft still isn't building any phones itself. Microsoft says it's aiming the platform at "life maximizers," and it's come up with a fictitious 38 year-old couple named Anna and Miles who represent the target end users: people who need to get work done on their phones but still want to play games and don't want to fiddle around with settings. It's cute, we'll give them that.

 

Hubs and first-party apps

Hubs are the clearinghouses for the phone's core functionality, broken down by genre -- it's a unique (and rather intuitive) concept unlike anything we've seen on other mobile platforms. Third-party developers will be able to tap into these hubs to enhance them; an example given at MIX10 was a photo retouching app that plugs into the Pictures hub and lets users open and modify their images directly from there. We haven't seen everything from Windows Phone 7 yet -- particularly in the application department -- but here's a look at what we have been given access to, and brief descriptions of the software's functionality:

People hub: Pulls in contacts from Gmail, Exchange, Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live and others, aggregating contact information, status updates, and contact images into a single view (or views, really). The main view of this hub keeps your most recently or heavily contacted people in first view dynamically (though this can be customized as well), and allows you to quickly jump to feeds of your recent updates from social networks aggregated by Windows Live. There's also a section here called "me" where you can view and edit your own statuses within your networks.