Weekend Reading for Feb 20/21: Windows Phone 7 Series called, and the world said…..

We’ve unveiled quite a few new products in recent months – Windows 7, Bing, and Natal to name a few. Monday, in Barcelona, we added another name to that list: Windows Phone 7 Series.

At Mobile World Congress that day, Steve Ballmer, along with Andy Lees and Joe Belfiore gave reporters and others their first look at our new mobile phone operating system. And they had a lot to show. We see  Windows Phone 7 Series as a major shift in smartphone operating systems. As Belfiore put it, “we kind of felt like the phones, they looked like PCs. (But) a phone is just not a PC. It’s a smaller, more intimate device.”

The team has been working hard for quite some time and we wondered what the reaction would be.  So far reaction has been great.  We really appreciate the response to Windows Phone 7 Series that we’ve received from technology enthusiasts from much of the technology press.

In case you missed them you can see a compilation of reviews here.

And here are a few of the highlights:

Gizmodo:  “Windows Phone 7 feels like an iPhone from the future.”  And “The Windows Phone 7 team came up with their own vision of what the cellphone should be. In the process, they have created a beautiful user interface in which the data is at the center of user interaction.”

PCMag.com: “It’s fun to explore. The interface makes sense. It’s easy to find the things you need. Nothing is buried. It uses the power of a mobile computer to put important information at the fore – possibly even more immediately than the iPhone.”

Engadget: “From the floor to ceiling, 7 Series is just a very new operating system with very new ideas about how users should be involved with their devices.”

PC World: “Microsoft has finally caught up with the competition by delivering a clean, socially-connected interface and implementing features like multitouch and the beautiful Zune media player.”

Jason Chen at Gizmodo wrote an interesting article in which he lays out some of the opportunities and challenges, as well as his wish list for Windows Phone.  Jason is pretty direct about some of the things he thinks Microsoft could have done better in the past and what he expects to see in the future.  It’s an interesting perspective on what we showed this week in Barcelona.

There’s plenty of work for us to do between now and then but we are looking forward to launching Windows 7 Phone Series this coming holiday season.

On a different note here’s something that’s definitely worth seeing.   Bill Gates spoke last week at the TED2010 conference in California.  He gave a fascinating talk on the need for new global “miracles” in the production of energy.  You can see a video of his talk here.

Have a good weekend.

Posted by Dominic Carr
Director, Microsoft News Center.

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