"One of the most appealing parts of the iPhone is its Web browser. Mobile Safari is powered by the WebKit engine, and this same engine also powers the desktop browser. The result is a Web experience that, while not identical to the desktop experience, is not far off. Windows Mobile, on the other hand, has a browser that's roughly derived from Internet Explorer 6. The result? A decidedly second-rate Web experience. Windows Phone 7 Series will improve things somewhat-to approximate parity with Internet Explorer 7-but it remains behind its desktop counterpart."

I'm finding it hard to put any kind of posiive spin on this - fact is, it's hard to be positive about a lot of the WP7S news that's come out over the past few weeks. I can (probably) learn to live with most of them, but this is one area that I'm going to find hard to gloss over. If we had access to alternative browsers like Opera that's one thing, but it looks like that's still going to be a ways off with the restrictions Microsoft is placing on developers. Getting on par with IE7 may be good enough, but...who knows? WP7S is coming late to the party as it is, and a dated web experience is just one more strike against it.

"HTC Corporation today outlined its disagreement with Apple's legal actions and reiterated its commitment to creating a portfolio of innovative smartphones that gives consumers a variety of choices. Founded in 1997 with a passion for innovation and a vision for how smartphones would change people's lives, HTC has continually driven this vision by consistently introducing award-winning smartphones with U.S. mobile operators."

That has to be the most polite way to respond to a lawsuit I've ever read - who wrote this, a Canadian? Anyway, the press release outlines some of the interesting firsts that HTC has made in the market. I didn't realize they created the hardware for the first Windows PDA back in 1998. That would have been an HPC if memory serves - Palm-sized PCs weren't out yet, were they? I wonder which HPC HTC was an OEM for? Compaq? Philips? HP? NEC?

Consumers are fickle creatures; they change their minds all the time when it comes to phone contract renewal time. HOWEVER...I wonder if "app lock-in" will play a role in moving to other platforms? As in, you're Joe Smith and you have an iPhone and you've spent $200 on apps over your two year contract...that app investment, will it make you feel like you need to stay with your iPhone even if there's another phone you like more? I wonder...

The reality is, of course, that the majority of users don't yet have smartphones - so in that sense the market is wide open - yet I think the biggest adoption blocker remains the costs of data plans. If you want your phone to do more than make calls, sent texts, and MMS, you're increasing the monthly outlay by a fair bit - especially if you're a light phone user with a small minutes plan, it can easily double the monthly cost of your phone bill (it does in my case). Until the carriers start to want all these people on their data networks, I think data plans will remain expensive, and the bulk of the population will stay away.

Damn, I wish the phone had that pop-up holographic display - wouldn't that be cool? Even cooler than having copy and paste? ;-)

It's been an exciting week with all the MIX10 News flooding our homepage and causing quite a stir on some points. In case you missed anything, here's what we covered relating to MIX10 (and just for fun - who has been doing all the work?):

• Highlights From The MIX10 Keynote! (Jon)
• Check Out Some Live Mix 10 Content (Jason)
• Microsoft Unveils Samsung Phone as Third Windows phone Handset (Jason)
• Windows Phone 7 Marketplace Demo Video (Jason)
• All the Goodies from MIX 10, Engadget Style (Jason)
• Managing Your Photos, Videos, and Music Using the Zune Software (Jason)
• Windows Phone 7 Series Push Notifications (Nurhisham)
• Microsoft Talks About Windows Phone Marketplace for End-Users (Darius)
• Netflix For Windows Phone 7 (Ed)
• What You Need To Get Started Developing for Windows Phone 7 Series (Jon)
• A Conversation with Bill Buxton and Albert Shum; Microsoft's User Experience Gurus (Jason)
• Windows phone 7 Will Lack Copy & Paste: Please Proceed With Your Screaming and Yelling (Jason)
• No User-Replaceable Storage on Windows phone 7 Devices: Please Proceed With Your Screaming and Yelling (Jason)
• Rumour: Copy/Paste Coming to Windows phone 7 Eventually? (Jason)
• More Hands-On Time With Windows phone 7 (Jason)
• Windows Phone 7 Series -- Yes, it can make a phone call! (Eriq)
• Free Ebook: Programming Windows Phone 7 Series (Jon)
• Attack of the Show on Windows phone 7 (Jason)

And if you want to watch any of the MIX Presentations, they're available here! What a week, Kudos to Jason for keeping the news pumping! Jason - take a rest, you deserve it!

"Speaking at a MIX10 session about Windows Phone 7 Series architecture this morning, Microsoft's Istvan Cseri mentioned that the Windows Phone Marketplace -- the one and only clearinghouse for apps in WP7S -- will be able to remotely revoke licenses. Since devices will only run properly-licensed apps, this effectively means the company will be able to shut down apps remotely -- a capability they'd probably invoke if a Marketplace app were to badly misbehave en masse, for example."

The paranoid in me says "Whoa... what if I want that app". The sane person in me says this is actually a good thing - it can be invoked to prevent bad applications from messing up the phone experience. While it sacrifices flexibility, it increases the likelihood that your Windows Phone 7 Series experience will be much better than (certainly) Windows Mobile 6.5. Now lets just hope that this 'bad' applications discipline extends to provider bloatware!

"All naysaying aside, people are pretty excited about Windows Phone 7. Our readers are excited for it. I'd be outright lying if I said I wasn't excited about it, too. Know who else is excited? The Windows Phone 7 team - but perhaps not for the reasons you'd expect. With a few years of work finally coming to a head, some of the folks on the Windows Phone 7 team are taking a step back, looking at the fruits of their labor... and leaving. Not because they're ashamed, and not because they're being poached by the competition - but because instead of making Windows Phone 7, they want to make things for Windows Phone 7."

Going back a few years, anyone remember Two Peaks software, headed up by Mel Sampat? I always liked Two Peaks software - in fact, I'm still using FlexWallet to this day, despite it being replaced by eWallet, and always like what Sampat did for users in terms of creating really superb software. He went to work for Microsoft a few years ago, and I kept in touch - in fact, at one point we had a conference call about what a pain that stupid birthday alarm triggering at midnight problem was. I'll have to find out if that lunacy has continued on into Windows phone 7 - I kind of doubt it, but then again, I never thought after 7+ years the same problem would continue to cause problems. But I digress...

Mel Sampt is now on his own again, under the company name Mist Labs, and in partnership with Trinket Software, they've already released/updated their first application: Twikini, updated for Windows phone 7 goodness. It looks good, though I notice it still has the same problem as Twikini does today on Windows Mobile 6.5. It's the Twitter app I use on my HD2 after suffering the baffling dysfunctions of HTC's Twitter app, Peep, for too long. The problem with Twikini is that it forces you to go into the Tweet to read it because it doesn't display the full 140 characters, then back out again to see your feed. I'm a big fan of efficiency in software, and anything that forces me to perform more actions isn't good in my book. Based on the screenshots, it looks like Twikini for Windows phone 7 shows even less of the Tweet...but they have time to change that based on user feedback.

Anyway, welcome back to the world of the indy developer Mel - we missed you!

Long Zheng has some really cool screen shots on his site, apparently of what early mock-ups looked like for Metro, the name for the visual design that Windows phone 7 is made up of. Well worth checking out - some of them I like more than how Windows phone 7 looks today!

"With breaking news about the Windows 7 mobile apps from MIX10, Chris Hardwick talks to Engadget's Joshua Topolsky about what Microsoft is bringing to the table, from Xbox gaming on Windows 7 phones, a preview of their new apps and more."

Sure, there are more than a few things that some people aren't too happy about right now with Windows phone 7, but there's one very important thing that Microsoft has done with the announcement of this new version: they've put themselves on the map in a way that hasn't happened in a very long time. More from me later on this topic, but I think it's really important to acknowledge that fact.

"That's Charles Petzold! Looking stylish with the cover of his free ebook on his tee shirt. It's a draft preview of his upcoming book (to be published in the fall): Programming Windows Phone 7 Series. This preview ebook contains six chapters in three parts (153 pages total):"

A draft version of the upcoming book Programming Windows Phone 7 Series is available for free download. So if you haven't had a chance to start playing around with the new developer tools, here is one more reason to start - and if you have, here is another thing for your development arsenal.

"Sure, we've been pushing Microsoft hard for Windows Phone 7 Series details like copy and paste (no) and multitasking (no), but we just realized that we've never actually seen a 7 Series device... make a phone call. A little running around later and we've got two demo handsets calling each other..."

With all of the recent video coverage of WP7, no video has shown a WP7 device make an actual phone call. Engadget recently posted a short video of two WP7 devices making a call between each other (and please don't call the number shown out of respect) that demos how the phone experience will work overall.

One glaring issue to me is how easy it'll be to respond to a call by applying accidental pressure to the Answer or Ignore buttons with incoming calls. HTC solved this problem in their most recent TouchFLO 3D interface by requiring users to slide a graphic control knob left or right to answer or ignore a call. I LOVE this feature in my Touch Pro2, and Microsoft should learn a thing or two from HTC when it comes to specific features like this, since "butt dialing" has been an epidemic problem with touch-screen smartphones for a while now.

While it's difficult to know WP7's phone features in detail at the moment, what are you thoughts and/or questions about the phone interface so far? Personally, I'll miss having dedicated physical answer/end buttons (it's great when your fingers "know" exactly where specific functions are) and I wonder if voice-dialing (VoiceCommand) will make it in WP7...

"We just spent some quality time with the MIX10 build of Windows Phone 7 Series running on the same prototype hardware sourced from Garmin-Asus that we saw at MWC -- and apart from a few Murphy's Law-style demo hiccups, we loved what we saw."

I'll say this much: anyone who thinks that this is a copy of the iPhone clearly isn't paying attention. Well worth watching - lots of great stuff in the video. Love it or hate it, Windows phone 7 is full of little things that, when taken together, make for a very different experience than anything else out there today.

"Contrary to the controversial report out of Microsoft MIX10 this week that Windows Phone 7 Series will not feature copy & paste functionality, a person close to the den explained that copy & paste is definitely a scenario and feature that the team is putting a lot of thought about and hope to bring to the platform soon after initial release."

This echoes what I know about the topic and have been trying to say in our very lively discussion on the subject (between the weeping and gnashing of teeth). If this rumour is accurate though, Microsoft has done itself a huge disservice by trying to spin this as a by-design feature rather than telling us "Look, we know you want it, we want it, but we just couldn't pull it off in time - but we're making a commitment to do it as soon as we can." Honesty is always better than trickery. This whole thing has made this a day I want to end soon (that photo above is how I feel right now).

"We found out from Todd Brix of Microsoft that Windows Phone 7 Series will eschew user-replaceable memory. Memory cards may still be used by manufacturers and OEMs, but those won't be easily or readily accessible to the end-user. This will allow, as Microsoft puts it, for a better user experience on the device, and we're not sure that the primary motive for locking down storage memory is for a better experience - we're guessing it has to do with DRM though the strategy would go well with Microsoft's move to remove a file management system."

Although I tend to put a memory card in my phone and leave it there - rarely if ever taking it out - I've always like the idea of removable storage because there are two constants in the flash memory world: first, that the cards will always grow to have more storage, and second, that they'll get cheaper. I railed on Microsoft for not putting removable storage card slots in their Zune products, because it would have been a key advantage over the iPod, and now Microsoft is taking a step backwards in my opinion by removing the option for OEMs to offer removable storage cards. According to Todd Brix, this is due to wanting to offer a "better user experience". I call bunk on this point - any modern program not designed should automatically scan both local and removable storage and present the user with the content they want to see. If the user options up the photo application, it should show the user all the photos on their device, and their card, seamlessly. Anything less is just lazy programming and not caring about the user experience.

If HTC and the other OEMs offer devices with decent storage options (up to 32 GB, maybe even 64 GB if they want to rock the house), I personally won't care about this too much - but I know it shuts off a lot of scenarios for some people, and I wish Microsoft hadn't gone this route. I think in this respect, they're trying a bit too much to copy Apple - and that's not a good thing.

And since we're getting all the bad news out of the way this week, there's also no file system. I think the file system is a poorly-suited concept on a mobile phone and creates too much complexity for average users, but I know power users love having a file system.

You may now proceed with getting angry at Microsoft and swearing you'll move to Android.

"Ready for another long, drawn-out copy and paste controversy to overtake your every waking moment for a year or two? Good: Microsoft just mentioned in a Q&A session here at MIX10 in no uncertain terms that clipboard operations won't be supported on Windows Phone 7 Series... so that's that."

This is one of the groan-worthy things I learned about Windows phone 7 about a month ago, but haven't been able to share because it was under NDA. So...uh, yeah, no copy and paste right now in the product. Every MVP in the room had a fit when this information was revealed; it was real "shock and awe". We of course immediately started asking the team how they could leave out something so core to user experience, and the general response was that they wanted to have it in the product, but they couldn't fit it in by shipping time. I know, I know, many of you will feel they should have left something else out of the product and put in copy and paste. But, you know, there's this update thing that might make painful omissions like this easy for Microsoft to fix in the months after they go code complete, but before the products actually hit the shelves. The Zune HD that I took out of the box was missing a bunch of feature until I connected it and got the update so...there's hope. But proceed with your screaming and ranting anyway. ;-)

UPDATE: Todd Brix from Microsoft is saying the lack of copy/paste is by design.

"...I sit down with Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher for Microsoft Research and Albert Shum, Director of Mobile Experience Design for Windows Phone 7 Series to talk about creating compelling user experiences, how developers and designers can work together in harmony and random Canadian trivia."

Bill Buxton is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft, and Albert Shum is a Mobile Design Partner - curious titles, but if you want to understand some of the background behind the user experience of Windows phone 7, this video is a must-watch.

UPDATE: The video embed code from channel9 doesn't want to work, so you'll have to jump over to their site to watch the video.

"In the last six months, Apple and Google have jousted over acquisitions, patents, directors, advisers and iPhone applications. Mr. Jobs and Mr. Schmidt have taken shots at each other's companies in the media and in private exchanges with employees."

The New York Times has a very interesting article on the head-butting going on between Apple and Google right now. Frankly, I think the whole thing is a bit silly and is too ego-driven, but on the other hand, the inevitable distraction this will cause both companies gives Microsoft an opportunity to launch a brand new OS that will need some time to grow.

First you'll want to download the development tools at the developer website. Next, once you've got everything installed, you'll want to hit up these samples, demos, and Channel 9 labs at this Windows Team Blog post. From there on it's happy coding to those who want to get their apps ready for the next generation of Windows phones!

Quick reminder, contest for the Gomadic 2-in-1 Charger ends this Friday. You can check out the details and the thread here. DO NOT reply to this posting as your entry won't count unless it is to the original contest thread. Thanks!

"Using "super" to describe your new display technology just begs for criticism. Especially when the word is affixed to a handheld display technology as notoriously difficult (if near impossible) to see in direct sunlight as OLED. Fortunately, Samsung's Super AMOLED appears to have licked the outdoor readability issue while bettering the features that made us fall in love with AMOLEDs in the first place. First off, it's thinner since the touch sensors are now integrated into the display; colors are more vivid due to the removal of the obfuscating touch sensor layer that sits on top of TFT LCD and traditional AMOLED touchscreen displays; and even the viewing angle has been improved. You won't find a soundtrack in the video posted after the break because the technology is already booming enough."

First go and check out the 1:41 minute video here. Ok, are you excited? I am. Outdoor readability, brighter, more vivid colors, viewable from many angles - how could this not be a good thing? My only concern will be how battery life handles an awesome display like this. Video games are going to look fantastic. I just hope it's everything they're boasting it to be. How much brighter? How much more colorful? And is the outdoor readability going to be that much better? Only time will tell but I definitely think we're headed in the right direction.