This morning, I awoke to an email sent to me by an individual who travels on forums by the name of Interframe. Keeping a long story short, he pointed me to a post he made nearly 2 weeks ago regarding some Windows Mobile 7 discussion that took place in October of this year at the Windows Mobile DevCamp event. Equal parts astonishing are the lengths of time both the video and his post went unnoticed (especially considering the forum he posted it on was a Windows Mobile site). Even though he emailed me directly about it, I’d like to credit WMExperts as the source of this information since they’re the lucky candidates Interframe decided to grace with this information. Though there’s nothing here that makes you want to run out and slap your nearest mobile provider, the fact that questions were addressed in ANY capacity regarding Windows Mobile 7 back in October is worth this post.

In part, this is what Interframe had to say in his original post on the WMExperts forum:

Back in the beginning October of 2009, the Windows Mobile DevCamp event happened. The Windows Mobile DevCamp people decided to live stream on the web, on uStream. There were exactly 4 people from the Windows Mobile team to help out for the event (which wasn’t being hosted by MS) . Three of these team members were just there to anwser questions about developing on Windows Mobile. However, and this is where it gets interesting, there was one developer from the Windows Mobile 7 team from Microsoft. And he answered people’s question about it during the event’s Q&A session.

 

uStream webpage: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2268849

 

This stream is 2 hours long BUT luckly for you, I will point out where the imporant parts are. First skip to about 01:58 (one hour and fifty-eight minutes, edit: watch it from here to the end of the video, its worth it, trust me. Its about only a half hour) wait a while as your skipping through an hour , eventually, they’ll stop talking about WM7 (until they start talking about a “Zune Phone”, if you’d like to hear what they say, go ahead). After that, skip to about 02:34 (two hours and thirty four minutes) and again, be patient and wait for it to load, it will be worth it. You won’t regret what you’ll see and hear I PROMISE YOU THAT.

 

For those who are to lazy to watch, I will place the Q&A session conversation about WinMo 7 here (as much as i can):

 

First question (roughly translated): “So Steve Ballmer went out and recently said “Windows Mobile 6.1 wasn’t what we wanted it to be, neither was 6.5″, so with that in mind, when is 7 coming out?”

 

(The WM7 developer added to what the others from the WM team had to say about the question)

 

Windows Mobile 7 developer and his anwser (He is the guy in the blue shirt in the video): “I can give you a little inside information there Mike. I’m not gonna give you anymore than Loke gave you, but i can give you some context. My day job, is working on Windows Mobile 7. I own the calendar feature in fact. I had to try really really hard to convince my manager to let me come down here in San Fransisco and take a day off. All day long, working on 7, staying focused. Its on track. The reason its been delayed and you haven’t heard much about it is cause we had to go back to the drawing board with our strategy. Change things a little bit to be more competitive when we come out the door, so were not laughed at. We wanna make the same kind of impact the Zune HD made, if you look at Engadget and the blogosphere, people were very impressed with the Zune HD in many ways except for the lack of an app store. We wanna put out something that we’re all proud of, which is competitive on day one, we don’t wanna wait any longer.”

 

IF YOU LIKE WHAT YOUR HEARING, PLEASE, I BEG YOU, WATCH THE VIDEO AND SKIP TO THE PARTS I WAS TALKING ABOUT ABOVE! THIS STUFF IS 100% REAL!
There was a bit more so i hope you watch the Video!!!

 

Another question asked (roughly translated, at 02:19 two hours and nineteen min. in)
Q: “Are we gonna see better graphics support for Windows mobile? So one of the things i think made the iphone very succesful was how easy it made making rich graphics and UIs, are we going to see anything like that for Windows Mobile?”

 

A: “Yes! For sure!”
Windows Mobile 7 developer: “Yeah, it’s about time” (for Windows Mobile to enable rich graphics for developers)

 

Another question asked (roughly translated, 02:34, two hours and thirty-four min. in):
Q: “So one of the only ways to update your (Windows Mobile) phone is to either A: Wait for the carrier to release a patch or B: go to like XDA developers or something, are we gonna see that change for Windows Mobile so that it’ll update like the iphone?”

 

A: Windows Mobile 7 developer: “So (Windows Mobile) 7 isn’t as far away as you think it is”

 

(laughter)
“Yes, we are taking over-the-air updates very seriously”

 

(Guy who asked question: “So will it be in 6.5″)

 

(no one anwsers the question, laughter and long pause)

 

Windows Mobile 7 developer: “It’s coming, its not in 6.5″ (Here, he pretty much confirms over-the-air updates will appear in Windows Mobile 7, similar to the iphone and the Palm Pre)

In addition to all of that, Windows Mobile 6.5.3 was apparently inadvertently documented on MSDN recently, so the Windows Mobile news is beginning to liven up a bit. To add my own contribution to it all, I did some digging around a while back after running across the resume of one Kimi Porter. Therein lies the following:

In other words, that’s referencing a Windows Mobile 7 video. With that in mind, I decided to find out everything I could about it. Naturally, an email to Kimi came back a nil, so I looked up Ben Mor and RSA/Little Minx. Unfortunately, all I found was his little spot on the web on the RSA/Little Minx site. BOO! I was really looking forward to finding something I wasn’t supposed to. lol.

With that being a total bust, I thought back to a video I originally saw on Long Zheng’s site, but since neither of us could find it again on his site when I asked him about it (lol), I dug it up on YouTube. Well, low and behold, there was another video on YouTube I had never seen before. Since neither of these videos seem to showcase Windows Mobile 7 specifically, I don’t think either of them are the video references in Kimi’s resume. Either way, if you’ve never seen them before, check ‘em out:

Windows Mobile 7 in Live Mesh Ad:

SaaS Promo with Windows Mobile 7 Central Menu Experience UI (this was the one Long originally posted way back when):

So, that about wraps up this edition of Windows Mobile 7 stuff. I’ve got my eyes on a couple of other places where information is imminent (some nice placeholders are up but that’s it as of yet), so as soon as something juicy gets posted, I’ll be the first to bring it to you!

*Special thanks to Interframe for the email.

-Stephen
http://www.msftkitchen.com