Windows Phone 7
Windows Phone 7 is the first release of the Windows Phone mobile client operating system, released worldwide on October 21, 2010, and in the United States on November 8, 2010. It runs on the Windows CE 6.0 kernel. It serves as the successor to Windows Mobile 6.5.
Windows Phone 7 was a complete overhaul of Microsoft's previous mobile Windows platforms. It was designed with the distinct flat-styled Metro interface. Due to shell changes, Windows Phone 7 cannot run Windows Mobile 6 applications. The first major update to Windows Phone 7 was Windows Phone 7.5, codenamed "Mango", which was globally released on September 27, 2011. Windows Phone 7.x was succeeded by Windows Phone 8, which was released on October 29, 2012; existing Windows Phone 7.x hardware could not upgrade to the incompatible Windows Phone 8 software. As a compromise to existing users, Microsoft released Windows Phone 7.8 on January 31, 2013, adding a few features backported from Windows Phone 8, such as a more customizable start screen and the new bootscreen.
Microsoft ended support for Windows Phone 7 on January 8, 2013, and for Windows Phone 7.5 and 7.8 on October 14, 2014.
History
Microsoft officially unveiled the new operating system, Windows Phone 7 Series, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on February 15, 2010, and revealed additional details at MIX 2010 on March 15, 2010. The final SDK was made available on September 16, 2010. HP later decided not to build devices for Windows Phone, citing that it wanted to focus on devices for its newly purchased webOS. As its original name was criticized for being too complex and "wordy", the name of the operating system was officially shortened to just Windows Phone 7 on April 2, 2010.On October 11, 2010, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the 10 launch devices for Windows Phone 7 with HTC, Dell, Samsung, and LG Support, with sales beginning on October 21, 2010 in Europe and Australia and November 8, 2010 in the United States. The devices were made available on 60 carriers in 30 countries, with additional devices to be launched in 2011. Upon the release of Windows Phone 7's "Mango" revision, additional manufacturers became partners, including Acer, Fujitsu, and ZTE.
Windows Phone initially supported twenty-five languages, with applications being available through Windows Phone Store in 35 countries and regions. Support for additional languages and regions were subsequently brought through both the Mango and Tango updates to the OS respectively.
Features
Core
Windows Phone 7 is the only version of Windows Phone that features the Windows CE kernel, which was also used in Windows Mobile and Pocket PC systems.User interface
Windows Phone 7 features a user interface based on a design system codenamed and commonly referred to as Metro. The home screen, called "Start screen", is made up of "Live Tiles". Tiles are links to applications, features, functions and individual items. Users can add, rearrange, or remove tiles. Tiles are dynamic and update in real time – for example, the tile for an email account would display the number of unread messages or a tile could display a live update of the weather.Several key features of Windows Phone 7 are organized into "hubs", which combine local and online content via Windows Phone's integration with popular social networks such as Facebook, Windows Live, and Twitter. For example, the Pictures hub shows photos captured with the device's camera and the user's Facebook photo albums, and the People hub shows contacts aggregated from multiple sources including Windows Live, Facebook, and Gmail. From the Hub, users can directly comment and 'like' on social network updates. The other built-in hubs are Xbox Music and Video, Xbox Live Games, Windows Phone Store, and Microsoft Office. Due to Facebook Connect service changes, Facebook support is disabled in all bundled apps effective June 8, 2015.
Windows Phone uses multi-touch technology. The default Windows Phone user interface has a dark theme that prolongs battery life on OLED screens as fully black pixels do not emit light. The user may choose a light theme instead, and can also choose from several accent colors. User interface elements such as tiles are shown in the user's chosen accent color. Third-party applications can be automatically themed with these colors.
Text input
Users input text by using an on-screen virtual keyboard, which has a dedicated key for inserting emoticons, and features spell checking and word prediction. App developers may specify different versions of the virtual keyboard in order to limit users to certain character sets, such as numeric characters alone. Users may change a word after it has been typed by tapping the word, which will invoke a list of similar words. Pressing and holding certain keys will reveal similar characters. The keys are somewhat larger and spaced farther apart when in landscape mode. Phones may also be made with a hardware keyboard for text input.Messaging
Windows Phone 7's messaging system is organized into threads. This allows a conversation with a person to be held through multiple platforms within a single thread, dynamically switching between services depending on availability.Web browser
Windows Phone 7.5 features a version of Internet Explorer Mobile with a rendering engine that is based on Internet Explorer 9.The built-in web browser allows the user to maintain a list of favorite web pages and tiles linking to web pages on the Start screen. The browser supports up to 6 tabs, which can all load in parallel. Other features include multi-touch gestures, a streamlined UI, smooth zoom in/out animations, the ability to save pictures that are on web pages, share web pages via email, and support for inline search which allows the user to search for a word or phrase in a web page by typing it. Microsoft has announced plans to regularly update the Windows Phone web browser and its layout engine independently from the Windows Phone Update system.
Contacts
Contacts are organized via the People hub, and can be manually entered into contacts or imported from Facebook, Windows Live Contacts, Twitter, LinkedIn and Gmail. Contacts may be manually imported from Outlook using Windows Live Contacts or Gmail. A "What's New" section shows a news feed and a "Pictures" section shows pictures from contacts on those social networks. A "Me" section shows the phone user's own social networks status and wall, allows the user to update their status, and allows checking into Bing and Facebook Places. Contacts can be added to the home screen by pinning them to the start. The contact's "Live Tile" displays their social network status and profile picture on the homescreen and the contact's hub displays their Facebook wall as well as all of the rest of their contact information and information from their other social networks.If a contact has information stored on multiple networks, users can link the two separate contact accounts, allowing the information to be viewed and accessed from a single card. As of Windows Phone 7.5, contacts can also be sorted into Groups. Here, information from each of the contacts is combined into a single page which can be accessed directly from the Hub or pinned to the Start screen.
Multimedia
The Music + Videos hub allows the user to access music, videos, and podcasts stored on the device, and links directly to the Xbox Music Store to buy music, or rent with the Xbox Music Pass subscription service. When browsing the music by a particular artist, users are able to view artist biographies and photos, provided by the Xbox Music. This hub integrates with many other apps that provide video and music services, including, but not limited to, iHeartRadio, YouTube, and Vevo. This hub also includes Smart DJ which compiles a playlist of songs stored on the phone similar to the song or artist selected. Purchased movies and other videos can be played through Xbox Video.The Pictures hub displays the user's Facebook and SkyDrive photo albums, as well as photos taken with the phone's built-in camera. Users can also upload photos to social networks, comment on others photos, and tag photos on social networks. Multi-touch gestures permit zooming in and out of photos.
Media support
Windows Phone 7 supports WAV, MP3, WMA, AMR, AAC/MP4/M4A/M4B, and 3GP/3G2 standards. The video file formats supported include WMV, AVI, MP4/M4V, 3GP/3G2, and MOV standards. These supported audio and video formats would be dependent on the codecs contained inside them. It has also been previously reported that the DivX and Xvid codecs within AVI are also playable on the system. Unlike the previous Windows Mobile operating system, there are currently no third-party applications for handling other video formats. The image file formats that are supported include JPG/JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIF and Bitmap.After the "Mango" update, Windows Phone 7 added the ability for users to have custom ringtones. Ringtone audio files must be under 1MB and less than 40 seconds long. Custom ringtones still cannot be used for text messages, IMs or emails.