Microsoft showed off its upcoming Windows Phone OS at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain today, and showed the video teaser above onstage. Without ever mentioning the iPhone, it completely trashes it and all the other copycat touch phones that are following in its wake.
The narrator laments the “Sea of Sameness” that smartphones have fallen into, with each new phone “‘just a slightly better version than the one before it.” Then it tries to undermine the iPhone’s greatest strength: the 150,000 apps on its platform. The video positions the problem as a “focus on apps over the phone experience itself” and points out how “current smartphones make you to use them one at a time—in and out, and onto the next app, then the next, and the next, rarely working together.” It illustrates this with a woman in a labyrinth opening up doors labeled with different app icons (can you find the Foursquare check mark?). Of course, the iPhone the major smartphone that still doesn’t run multiple apps in the background—Android and Palm, for instance, do.
It’s easy to talk trash when you are losing market share. But will Windows Phone turn things around for Microsoft on the mobile front? Here’s another video MobileCrunch editor Greg Kumparak took of a Windows Phone in action.
Windows Mobile is a compact operating system combined with a suite of basic applications for mobile devices. Devices that run Windows Mobile include Pocket PCs, Smartphones, Portable Media Centers, and on-board computers for certain automobiles. It is designed to be somewhat similar to desktop versions of Windows, feature-wise and aesthetically. Additionally, third-party software development is available for Windows Mobile.
The iPhone 3GS, announced at WWDC on June 8, 2009, is a faster iPhone featuring a 3.0 megapixel camera with autofocus, video recording capabilities with editing, and increased (3X) processing speed. The 3GS is available in 16GB and 32GB, for $199 and $299, respectively. Other new features include: Digital Compass Cut, Copy, and Paste MMS (release delayed in the US) WiFi tethering (release delayed in the US) Voice Control Landscape Keyboard Spotlight Search Voice Memos
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