When you have an Android smartphone, connecting with your friends via GChat is a pretty straightforward and seamless process. Microsoft wants to offer the same kind of idea, but within its Windows environment. That’s why they’re promising a “seamless, built-in texting and IM experience powered by Windows Live Messenger” on Windows Phone 7.

This “seamless” integration should come along with the next version of Windows Phone, which we are assuming is the Mango build that’s been making its way around Internet news sources. Instead of getting you to open an app for Windows Live Messenger, it’ll be built into the phone’s Messaging Hub. That combines your IM and SMS chats into one place.

While this isn’t all that surprising, it is almost surprising that they’re offering Facebook Chat integration into Messaging Hub too. Again, there’s no need to download a separate app to access that. Makes you wonder if they’ll add AIM, GChat, Skype, and other protocols down the line for the same kind of native support.

And yes, there is support for both photo sharing and group chats via the updated system. Windows Phone 7 may not have the same kind of market share as iOS or Android, but these Mango updates are starting to make the platform sound a little more appealing.

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I suspect this was announced today because the “assumption” of it working on Macs may have been overlooked by some this Monday, just to make sure any Apple iPhone carrying Mac users want to switch over, you’ll be fine. “Later in 2010 Microsoft will make a public beta available of a tool that allows Windows Phone 7 to sync select content with Mac computers.” There you have it, now the only question remains is will iTunes work with your Windows Phone, or will there be a Zune version for Mac?

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We could have a variety of Asus, Dell, HTC, LG, possibly Motorola, and Samsung WP7 devices in our hands before the holiday season. That’s good timing for Microsoft and keeps in line with earlier rumors of an October launch.

The post Windows Phone 7 coming October 11 appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Windows Phone 7 is on the brink of distribution and we’ve managed to catch a glimpse at one of the first games made for the device; Bye Bye Brain- a 3D zombie killing classic Tower Defense game where you must attack the flesh eating zombies and stay alive until the military rescues you. Not very creative, in respects to a post-apocalyptic world scenario, but killing zombies is killing zombies, so hey. The game gets good use of new Windows Phone 7 features, including pinch-to-zoom in to zombies for 3D slaying mode, swiping and multi-touch tapping their brains allover the place. We’ll just have to wait and see what its all about once we get an official release.

Ricardo Acosta via Recombu

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Microsoft to launch Windows Phone 7 OS with plenty of support from manufacturers

Microsoft has revealed additional hardware partners for their Windows Phone 7 OS, announcing that Dell and HTC are now on the list of manufactuers who will be making Windows Phone 7 phones.  This is good news for the company, who have already got Asus, Samsung and LG to pony up a few devices.  You can expect something from each of the companies before the year is out; while no set date on the official launch day of Windows Phone 7 is keeping us in suspense.   What we can expect though is a release for the “holidays,” that could mean as early as late November, if they want be nestled under the erect mass of harvested forest matter that is.

“We will offer the best aspects of Android and the best of the iPhone, giving users the flexibility of different form factors, but with the rigidity of apps that are guaranteed to work on every device that is out there”  Greg Sullivan, senior product manager for Microsoft, told Pocket-lint. I’m most excited about what HTC and Samsung will bring to the table, both have been leading quite an impressive line-up with their Android devices, it can only get better from here.

[Pocket-Lint]

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Dell Lightning leaked - Photo: engadget

Not particularly impressed with the Dell Mini 3i? Don’t really want anything to do with the Dell Streak series? That doesn’t mean that the giant computer maker isn’t going to go after your smartphone dollars with yet another offering. In a very exciting move, it seems that we could be getting our hands on the Dell Lightning smartphone.

While the hardware looks pretty slick (and I’ll get into that a little further in just a moment), the real news is that this will be powered by Windows Phone 7. Windows Mobile has really fallen into the background these last couple of years, getting overshadowed by the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android (and even webOS from Palm to an extent), so this could be a major boon for Microsoft.

The Dell Lightning is one classy-looking phone. Based on the rumors, that’s a 4.1-inch WVGA OLED touchscreen display, going bigger and prettier than that other phone from Cupertino. It’s busting out the speed with its 1GHz Snapdragon processor and 512MB of RAM to boot. And yes, it supports Flash too.

In addition to that giant touchscreen, the Dell Lightning also has a portrait-style slide-out QWERTY keyboard. This is similar in style to the Palm Pre, but an entirely different look. Rounding out the features are 8GB memory, GPS, FM, WiFi, 3G, and an accelerometer.

From what I hear, Dell plans on launching the Lightning smartphone with both AT&T and T-Mobile around the fourth quarter of this year. They’re working on an LTE version too, apparently, so that’s pretty hot too. Either way, this sure beats the non-smartphoneness of the Microsoft Kin One and Kin Two in my books.

Photos courtesy Engadget.

Dell Lightning Photos Leaked

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Microsoft Reveals the Kin One and Kin Two

The journey has taken longer than any of us expected, but that whole “Project Pink” business at Microsoft finally emerged as something real yesterday when the company revealed the Microsoft Kin line of mobile phones. This release follows the acquisition of Danger and a partnership with Verizon, Sharp, and Vodafone.

To usher in its freshman foray into self-branded cell phone hardware, Microsoft is going to offer two different handsets at launch: the Kin One and the Kin Two. You may have once known these by their respective codenames during the Project Pink development: Turtle and Pure. It’s debatable whether these new names are any better.

Microsoft Introduces Kin One and Kin Two

Not to be confused with Thing One and Thing Two from Dr. Seuss, the Kin One and Kin Two feature the same kind of user interface and the same kind of social media-minded fundamental functionality, but they are quite different in size and stature.

Starting with the similarities, they’ll both have the same operating system, which has yet to be named. I guess we’ll just call it the Kin OS for now, or assume it’s Windows Phone 7. The main homescreen is known as the Loop and it is an automatically updated, real-time stream of all your news feeds, social network updates, emails, text messages, and the like. Yes, automatically updated.

You’ll also notice a small dot near the bottom of the screen. That’s called the “Spot” and you can drag the content to the “Spot” in order to share it with your friends, either through conventional means like MMS and email, or through the social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Regarding differences, the Kin One (or Kin 1) is the smaller of the two, looking almost like a stout Palm Pre. The compact form factor allows it to literally fit in your palm. You get a vertical slide-out QWERTY keyboard (like the Pre), 5MP camera, 4GB storage, and full access to the Zune music store.

The Kin Two (or Kin 2) is the larger of the two and it looks more like a regular smartphone. Like the Kin One, it has a touchscreen, but this one is bigger. It also bumps up to 8GB of memory, an 8MP camera with 720p HD video, and a horizontal slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

Continuing the Sidekick Tradition

It’s been some time since we last saw the T-Mobile Sidekick (also sold as the HipTop in some markets). That represented a partnership between Danger (who made the OS) and Sharp (who made the hardware). It seems that they have once again been combined for the Microsoft Kin.

Just as the SideKick line was never a true smartphone, so is the case with the Kin One and Kin Two. They’re not supposed to be real smartphones. Instead, they cater to a tech-savvy youth market who are more inclined to interact with their friends. Is this the second coming of the Sidekick? Yes and no.

Back when the Sidekick was still popular, smartphones were more expensive, more inaccessible by the average consumer, and more catered to the business market. That has changed and, with that change, I fear that Kin will not be able to carve out the same kind of following as the Sidekick.

Social Network like MOTOBLUR?

This social media thing isn’t going to blow over any time soon, so it seems that all the hardware manufacturers are looking for ways to better capitalize on this interest. Motorola did that by using Google Android and developing the MOTOBLUR UI to go over top of it. We’ve also seen other phones with amalgamate information across networks so that you have a unified contact list.

The Microsoft Kin is doing much of the same, but I find that the user interface becomes far too cluttered as a result. Social networking is its clear focus, to be sure, but there has to be a better way to organize all that info.

Microsoft Kin Two Social Networking Home Screen

Be Wary of Battery Life and Data Usage

The “always on” social networking aspect of the Microsoft Kin One and Kin Two concern me. According to Microsoft, the Loop constantly updates itself. If you have a lot of Twitter and Facebook friends, that’s a lot of data to rifle through. (It seems that the updates are every 15 minutes, from what I hear, and not truly “real time” like how RIM’s push email is real time.)

Further still, every picture and video you capture with your Kin device is automatically saved in the cloud as part of Kin Studio. The cloud-based interface stores and organizes your captured memories based on a timeline and with geotagged GPS information. This means that you are sending boatloads of data and your GPS is always on.

This can’t be good for battery life and it can’t be good for your data plan either. Imagine uploading several 8-megapixel pictures and 720p HD videos to the cloud throughout the day. Unless you have a truly unlimited data plan and you’re always next to a power outlet, this could pose an issue.

The Palm Pre All Over Again?

The Palm Pre was hailed as the savior of Palm. It was going to pull it out of the dated mess of Treos and Centros, letting the company emerge as a leader in the new generation. While the Pre has been able to sell some units, it hasn’t been the resounding success that they had hoped.

Will Microsoft be doing the same thing with the Kin? The “Sidekick” philosophy doesn’t work in today’s climate, I don’t think, and Microsoft hasn’t exactly been a huge winner in the hardware arena (think Zune vs. iPod). But maybe that’s enough for MS; maybe they’re okay with second or third fiddle.

Microsoft Kin One and Kin Two Photo Gallery

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Microsoft announced the Windows Phone Application Platform at MIX10.

Why build applications when you’ve built the platform for the application? Developers will get 70 percent of each application sale and Microsoft 30 percent according to Microsoft’s announcement Monday, including a Windows Phone 7 application store and user interface.

At MIX 2010 Microsoft made it very clear what tools developers would need to start building for Windows Phone 7. With leaked information posted awhile back, it comes as no surprise that the application development will in fact be done in Silverlight and game development in XNA.

Here’s what’s interesting as far as game development is concerned – XNA is a cross-platform development environment much like Java. Development in XNA gives game developers the chance to develop games for all the Microsoft platforms such as Windows 7, XP, Vista and the king of the hill: the mighty XBox.

For application development, Microsoft is offering Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Microsoft Windows Phone 7 and an emulator for Windows Phone 7 application testing. “Our focus is on making the tools friction-free for developers to get in as easily as possible,” said Charlie Kindel, manager of Microsoft’s Windows Phone App Platform.

Like Apple and Google, Microsoft has also thrown their hat into the ring and launched an application store called Windows Phone Marketplace. The marketplace won’t be empty at launch because Microsoft has a list of impressive development partners such as EA, Foursquare, Namco and Sling to name just a few.  But it will indeed be a closed system, similar to Apple’s iTunes App store, being the only vehicle where the end-user can download software to their smartphone.

What does make this phone system unique and stand out from the pack is the user interface that combines and organizes applications and multimedia into Hubs, thus making it the first hub-based phone.

By giving developers the Windows Phone 7 platform a large slice of the action and the keys to the construction vehicle, is a calculated strategy. Microsoft like any company launching its ship out to sea to face many perils in the vast ocean knows this. They want a successful voyage in the computing ocean. Safeguarding their phone from sinking like the Titanic is always a good strategy too.

The post Windows Phone 7 developers get toolkit, app store closed like iTunes appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

A variety of Windows-powered smartphones.

When Apple came forward with the App Store for the iPhone, everyone got pretty excited. At the same time apps had already existed on other platforms; just not in a unified storefront. The other trouble was that other smartphones did not have the same kind of internal storage capacity as the iPhone.

As a result, it has been more difficult to install quite as large a number of applications on other smartphones because of internal memory limitations. That’s about to change, at least for the Microsoft fans in the audience. Rather than restrict you to internal memory, you can now install some apps on a storage card.

Microsoft just made an announcement on the ability to install new applications from the Windows Marketplace for Mobile has been added to both Windows Mobile 6.5 and the upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series.

Since you can get these microSD memory cards in fairly sizable capacities, you could say that this brings Windows Mobile smartphones on par with the iPhone, at least in terms of installing a large number of apps.

For the record, Google Android phones are still lacking in this ability and rely solely on internal memory for app installations. I have a feeling that’s going to change pretty soon based on today’s news.

The post Microsoft to let you install mobile apps on memory cards, sticks one to iPhone appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Building an operating system for handheld devices is a lucrative business. It is the story of David and Goliath all over again. Microsoft has been taking a sound beating in the mobile phone market.

Motorola’s CEO is business savvy. He is diversifying his product mix by introducing a brand of phones with Microsoft’s heavily touted Windows Phone 7. Essentially Motorola will have this new phone satisfying Motorola-loyal customer, with the ‘Motorola Droid’ targeting one segment of the market and the Windows 7 phone targeting another segment of the market. He’s got it covered.

The Windows 7 Phone series GUI architecture uses a “hub” thus slotting content in various categories. This may seem revolutionary and unique in contrast to Android but the truth is it’s a similar interface to Microsoft’s Media Player Zune project. It’s no big deal software companies recycle their code libraries and designs on older projects for newer projects all the time – it’s called ‘Software Recycling’. Rumour has it the Windows Phone 7 language is an amalgam of Silverlight, XNA and the .NET compact framework. Yes XNA the language used for writing code for X-Box games and Silverlight Microsoft’s alternative to Flash.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has reassured all concerned that Microsoft will continue to support Windows Mobile 6.5, although right now it looks like an ancient relic that Microsoft may want to drop like a hot potato.

Microsoft is also aware that Apple is another tough competitor with their I-Phone. Microsoft’s Marketing analysts want consumers to know that they are going to be offering a unique product different from Apple’s marketing strategy, to build media devices.

Looks like the software giant has its claws out and wants to put a stranglehold on the handheld device market reminiscent of the PC – Apple wars.

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