As promised Microsoft pumped out a good deal of new information regarding their upcoming mobile platform Windows Phone 7 Series. Much of the news that dropped was merely confirmation of features that we had expected would be present in the OS. Things like accelerometer support and 3D gaming were expectations for the platform and Microsoft has confirmed their role in WP7S. With these features WP7S phones should be able to compete with the 3D gaming being supported by the iPhone, Android, and more recently the WebOS.

Though Microsoft has many powerful features lined up for WP7S, they are still leaving out a few seemingly obvious features. Microsoft has confirmed that they will not be including copy and paste in the WP7S, at least not initially. I think that it’s fair to expect it in a software update at some point. Multitasking is another feature that takes on a similar approach to what Apple did with the iPhone in that it won’t be present on non-native applications. Things like the browser and the Zune app will of course run in the background while 3rd party applications will enter a paused state when exited. Upon re-entering the application it should resume fairly seamlessly. Sure it’s not perfect, but it should allow devices to run smoother and manage memory more effectively. Microsoft claims to be working at making multitasking more intuitive with certain tasks gaining the ability to do it. I’m guessing this would apply to streaming radio apps like Pandora in that they wouldn’t have to stop just because the user wants to check their email or answer a text message.

Microsoft does have some compelling services incorporated into WP7S namely, Xbox Live and Zune integration. At GDC Microsoft showed a demo of a game playing on the Xbox 360 paused, and then resumed on the Windows Phone handset. Achievements and gamer profiles of course transfer over to the mobile experience as well. Zune integration would include access to Zune Pass subscriptions and the Zune community with all its’ social features and play tracking.

Microsoft is also pushing to make development easy for the platform by extending Silverlight and XNA as tools for application development. Developers should be familiar with these tools already as they are popular for building PC and Xbox applications.

We still have a long six months until the purported launch of Windows Phone 7 Series and there will likely be a lot of changes to come. Stay tuned for all the news to come, and drop us a comment telling us what you think of Windows Phone 7 Series.

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