You may have heard that some intrepid hackers have gotten the emulator image for Windows Phone 7 in the developer tools to provide access to many of the built-in apps. (Or, as I call it, “my backup plan” for writing the book.) Nick Eaton over at the Seattle PI today linked to some PocketNow videos that show off this additional functionality. It’s very interesting stuff.
Here they are.
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In that first video, am I right in thinking that the full month view calendar might have pinch-to-zoom? The zoom out to that view was really smooth, would be awesome if you could just smoothly zoom in to whatever level you wanted.
I must say it’s great to see a true contender to take on the iPhone platform other then just Android.
From a purely UX standpoint, android looks.. i guess you would describe it as open source. Like a lot of open source applications, it’s done by developers and of course those developers have little interest in the beauty of the interface.
Windows Phone 7 has taken their Zune interface, which as a graphic designer i have always loved, and transported it to a phone which looks great and very usable.
I fell in love with my iPhone the first day i got it in my hands, but i must admit my eyes have wandered to this device! I truly hope it gets some traction and takes the iPhone on.
I hope we get a update, maybe not though. I think this emulator should be updated with time as more of the OS itself gets finalized. Maybe with VS2010 and SL going RTM/RTW on the 12th and 13th of this month, being key parts of the dev tools, we could get a updated emulator build? Maybe something like 6800 or w/e.
It’d be interesting if it does happen and MS has some things unlocked from the get go this time around.