Weekend Update for 2/12 - 2/14

Hey all,
Hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day weekend. Some (potentially) exciting things in the tech world happened this weekend at the Mobile World Congress.

First and foremost, Windows announced their new series of phones literally called Windows Phone 7 Series this weekend. I have to say, they seem to show some promise. For anyone who has played with the relatively new Zune HD, it looks as though the phone has a very similar look and feel; a (very) good thing. The Zune's and new 7 series interface is very slick and intuitive, very unlike previous Windows Mobile offerings. Given the updated demands of the modern consumer, Microsoft opted for customizable "panes" on the home screen that lead to various functions, a fresh and very stylistic take on the standard icons presented in other mobile OS offerings such as Android (without the Sense UI on some HTC phones) and the iPhone OS.

Another good thing? Virtually all carriers available to consumers will feature Windows Phone 7 Series phones, and hardware partners include some of the best in the business including Dell, Garmin-Asus, HTC, Samsung, and Qualcomm.

Yet another interesting tidbit is that MSFT opted to set standard minimum hardware specs for every phone carrying the 7 Series label, so no laggy performance due to hardware issues. A definite plus if you have ever used older versions of Windows Mobile. Second, they have decided that the OS must be the same across all platforms and carriers as they wanted the same exceptional user experience, very unlike what we see from Google's Android, which is run on various hardware platforms and sometimes has varied user interfaces (like the aforementioned Sense UI from HTC or Blur from Motorola). This can be a very good thing as it doesn't limit the consumer's choice of carrier based on their phone offerings like AT&T and its iPhone exclusivity. However, it does limit the ability for the user to customize the phone, a very strong point of Google's Android.

I will cover more on the 7 Series phones when more info becomes available, but if you want to know more, cruise on over to Engadget where they have live coverage of the MWC and hands on impressions of the phones and the 7 Series interface and functions.

Some other exciting news for everyone but Apple users unfortunately: Adobe has announced that they are porting AIR immediately and Flash 10.1 in the first half of the year to all Android, WebOS (Palm Pre,etc.), Symbian and Blackberry phones. You know what that means? No more limitations as to what content you can view on your phone's web browser! This has been a long time coming for Adobe, as Flash has been in high demand on mobile devices for a few years as the web browsing capabilities of mobile devices has been steadily increasing.

Well that's it for the weekend, now onto Monday.