Spot the difference
We had a quick chat with Oded Ran - UK head of consumer marketing for Windows Phone (pictured) - during a hectic second day at MWC 2010, and came away with the impression that Microsoft has tried to break the mobile device paradigm with WP7.
"It's a different kind of phone," said Ran. "It's not about putting all Microsoft's assets on one phone." When we asked what makes it do different, he said: "It's the same things we've done with Windows 7, Bing, Xbox - relentlessly thinking about end-users."
We'll let you end-users decide whether all this thinking has yielded favorable results - although we won't be seeing devices until "holiday 2010", but Ran stressed that in the UK - where we have yet to be offered the Zune - it will be a very fresh experience.
The reference devices Microsoft has used to generated screenshots weren't being put on show, although there was an interactive demo on a wall-mounted screen, but what we saw confirmed that the UI will be quite different from anything else. For example, the fact that the home-screen is not fixed in a frame, and you can access different parts of it with gestures, is novel.
When we asked Ran what his favourite feature of WP7 is, he focused on the start screen, stressing how Intuitive, customisable and information-rich it is. Microsoft will be drip-feeding us more information in the months leading up to the handset launches, but it will do well to keep the buzz going with so much else likely to happen in the mobile world in the intervening time.
