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[Ozymandias]

Microsoft's smart phone was announced today. The cumbersomely named "Windows Phone 7"

Gizmodo videos and impressions.

My first instinct was "daaaaang that an ugly UI" but it is very simple. After meditating on it, I've realized that I really love the core concept of this phone, which is what's separating it from Android and the iPhone: it's more of a phone than either of those. Whereas Google and Apple have conceived of the smartphone as a mobile handheld computing device, Microsoft has gone back to the roots of what a phone is- a device for communicating with people. They've streamlined the entire cloud into the phone. A contact isn't just a number you call, it's also their Twitter, Facebook, etc. It's a constant connection with that person, updated in real time. That's a really brilliant direction to take it, IMO. Hopefully, however, their app support doesn't suffer for it, which I think is the real risk here.

[Alex C]

My only issue with these devices is the way calling people seems to get lost in the shuffle a bit. For example, I like my brother's droid for anything but dialing, checking out recent contacts and calling people, which is why I don't own a smart phone myself. If this thing is actually more purpose driven around just organizing ways to contact people quickly and efficiently, I'd be sold, but it's tough to get a handle on the UI just from a video. I don't actually think the UI looks all that ugly, but I'm worried that once again people are concentrating on making things animated as opposed to making things faster. I'd be willing to work with a pretty damn ugly UI provided it's snappier than the rest of the competition.

[JD]

The creativity at the microsoft marketing department is at an all time low.

"Gonna call my broski on the windows phone 7, hold on"

[JD]

I would totally be into this phone though.

[est]

I'm pretty happy about this even though it's probably not gonna be compatible with my HD2 now.  I'm glad they decided to say "fuck it" and scrap basically everything and start fresh with what looks like the Zune as a base.  It was basically their best move and they should have done it in tandem with the fucking Zune HD launch last year.

That said, I am almost completely sure that we're still to receive another announcement about Windows Mobile Professional 7, the next iteration of the existing WinMo platform.  They can't really expect professionals to use this phone.  I support a bunch of WM6.1/6.5 phones at work and business users expect things to be basically exactly the same as they've always been.  Even moving between handsets running the same version of WM6.x is almost too much for them.

[David_Dovey]

The creativity at the microsoft marketing department is at an all time low.

To be fair Apple just put the letter "i" in front of whatever the thing they are making is.

[jhocking]

[DavidGrohl]

There is no phone called the 'Windows Phone 7'. 

They're referring to the Operating System name . . .