Our friends in the great, white north will be happy to know that Microsoft Windows Phone 7 will be launching in the United States and Canada simultaneous this fall.
This is great news for Canadian mobile phone users, as they’ve grown accustomed to waiting for devices like the Apple iPhone. In the video below, you can hear Microsoft Canada Mobility Solutions manager Greg Milligan said that the Windows Phone 7 launch will be simultaneous and that this will include devices from LG Electronics, HTC and Samsung. Interestingly enough, he also said these will be coming to multiple networks, which may not be the case in the United States.
We know that AT&T will be the “premiere” carrier for Microsoft Windows Phone 7 and this may mean it gets exclusivity at launch. I’d expect Windows Phone 7 devices to be on every carrier eventually but it may jump out of the gates with just a single carrier for an undetermined amount of time.
I’m looking forward to this operating system because Microsoft completely revamped Windows Mobile and it is taking a big risk by scrapping its legacy users. One of the most interesting aspects of Windows Phone 7 is the new “Metro” user interface, which moves away from the icons-in-a-grid model to a bunch of hubs that update in real time. It’s too soon to tell how this will work in real-world scenarios but the early previews have been positive.
The Microsoft Windows Phone 7 app ecosystem is also slowly rounding in to shape, as the company has been paying developers to create apps for the Windows Marketplace for Mobile. This should include multiple games that will tie into the XBox Live service for multi-platform gaming.
The company was still tight-lipped about the actual launch date but we’ve heard that the new platform could hit the shelves as early as the end of September. Whenever it hits, you can be sure we’ll give you our honest opinion on how it stacks up against the competition.
[Via WMPoweruser]