Windows Phone 7 Early Previews: A Pretty Frame, But Seriously Incomplete

From DailyTech: Terry Myerson, the Microsoft Corporate VP of Windows Phone Engineering who was recently called out on the Microsoft Kin phone debacle, had some good news to report yesterday. Windows Phone 7 hardware and software has been released in beta form to developers and a handful of reviewers.

Myerson writes:

"Starting today, thousands of prototype phones from ASUS, LG and Samsung are making their way into the hands of developers over the next few weeks. Combine that with the beta release of the Windows Phone developer tools, and I can’t wait to see how our developer partners take advantage of our new approach to smart design and integrated mobile experiences. I’m personally working on a flash card app for my daughter, and am consistently amazed by the ease with which Silverlight and Visual Studio make WP7 apps possible."

Early impressions of the phone boil down to that Microsoft seems to be nailing many key elements, but in other places presents conspicuously broken or missing functionality.

First let's get the bad out of the way. As widely rumored, Microsoft has not included copy and paste yet. There is a small chance that this will be included in the final version. Early reviewers say that text selection is working well -- so it seems baffling that Microsoft would not include it. But at this point that appears to be the case.

Also missing is third-party multitasking, which both Apple's iOS 4 and Google's Android OS currently support (and something that previous iterations of Windows Mobile supported). That's not to say updates won't be available to various apps, but it does mean that transitions to them may be significantly clunkier. And Flash web media plugin is missing -- and even stranger still, Microsoft's own Silverlight also isn't implemented.

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