The original source for this story appears to have come from Sudeep Bharati, Director of Developer Tools for Microsoft India’s Visual Studio Team. According to The Economic Times Mr. Bharati said “The low-cost version of the phone will have a different chassis than version 1 to be launched by 2010 end.” This lower end device would have a smaller screen which is one of the more expensive items in the parts that make up the phone. Things like lower RAM or lower resolution camera may be part of the cost cutting.

However, The Register got in touch with Microsoft about this entry level device and they flat out denied it.

Microsoft is working with OEM and MO partners to provide customers and developers with a consistent hardware experience across all devices. As part of this, there is a single Windows Phone 7 hardware specification that includes guidelines around screen options, storage, camera functionality, and processing.

Right now, Microsoft has to build a world class phone, market the heck out of it and get developers on board in a big way to have any chance of competing with the iPhone or Android platform. To do this they need to focus on a single product to make everyone’s life easier. This will allow developers to target one device basically, regardless of who makes it, and know that their app will work without having to worry about the screen size or amount of onboard RAM. From the consumer standpoint, they will know there is a base set of specifications and a certain performance level they can expect when they buy the device.

Microsoft still has to worry about developing countries that might not be able to handle WinPho 7’s pricing, but maybe that is where either the Kin comes into play or Windows Mobile 6.5. That platform will be around for a while yet meeting specific needs like ruggedized devices for industry and low cost options for OEM’s that want to build a low end smartphone.

Resource:
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/04/cheaper_windows.html

The questions about whether or not Apple could produce a compelling tablet have been answered. PCMag gave it an Editors’ Choice award, and most other reviews have been positive to glowing. Yes, there are still some big questions about the iPad. Will consumers embrace it after the initial rush? Will publishers’ dreams of the “iPad as industry savior” be realized? I’d say we’re 6 to 12-months away from being able to answer those questions. Even so, Apple’s iPad is a tablet done right, and I think Apple’s plan of using and extending its mobile OS in ever-larger devices is pure genius and one that Microsoft would do well to mimic.

Right now, we’re all waiting for Windows 7-based tablets, such as the HP Slate, to arrive. There will be others, of course, but HP’s is the one Microsoft is touting. It appears to have the most potential for rebooting Microsoft’s tablet PC efforts. It’s built on the Windows 7 platform—a desktop and laptop OS that I use every day. It’s the best version of Windows since, perhaps, Windows 95. By that I mean that it’s new, fresh, smart, and light enough and intuitive enough to not get in your way.

All that said, it’s still a desktop OS. It carries with it all of the complications that are typically associated with running a relatively complex piece of technology. For what it’s worth, Apple’s desktop OS, Mac OS X, is only marginally less complex. This has relatively little to do with the hardware. We’ve proven in PC Labs that netbooks (which have hardware specs that are roughly equivalent to the upcoming Windows tablets), can run Windows 7, but Windows still shows you too much about the guts of your system. You still install drivers, there’s still a Control Panel, and even the nifty new Device Stage leads you to a hardware setup or configuration screen eventually. Windows Phone 7, like the iPhone OS, shields the end user from those complications. If Microsoft and its partners put Windows Phone 7 on these tablets, an end user might never have to see any of them. Yet, with access to the new Microsoft Marketplace, they’ll still be able to install whatever apps they need—all from one central place. Clearly, Microsoft has a lot of ground to make up in the Marketplace—it’ll have to get much richer and faster if Microsoft wants people to rely on it for their Win Phone 7 app needs. Web-based offerings could help here. Microsoft’s Office Web Apps, for example, could be the perfect tools for these Windows Phone 7-based tablets.

Before someone goes for my throat, let’s define some terms. Tablets is, admittedly, a broad term, and there’s a lot of confusion about what is and isn’t a tablet computer. For the sake of my argument, I do not consider products like the Apple iPad and HP Slate full-blown computers, and, while versatile, they’re not suited for all computing tasks. I don’t think video editing, intensive photo editing, and CAD work are what you want to do with them. Laptops that convert into tablets are, essentially, full-blown PCs stuffed with powerful, near-desktop-level (sometimes desktop-level) components. They’re ready to do virtually anything. All-in-one touch-screen desktops, such as the HP TouchSmart, are not tablets.

If you accept my argument—that true tablets need to work more like mobile phones and less like desktop computers—then Apple’s iPad strategy makes perfect sense. The astounding market success of netbooks helped Apple realize that most people only want to do a limited number of things with their computers. But Apple CEO Steve Jobs was loath to deliver a low-end portable computer to the market. Obviously, he figured out that Apple could serve the netbook market, with a product that’s sexier, simpler, and yet more powerful than many low-end netbooks. The iPhone and iPod touch are incredibly human devices that respond to your actions in an almost instinctive way. It’s not much of a leap to surmise that this think/do interface metaphor could also work in a form factor just shy of a full-blown laptop. There are more facets to the iPad than simplicity, but the choice of the iPhone OS as the iPad platform is probably the most important decision Apple made in the entire product development process.

Putting what is, essentially, a mobile OS into, for example, the HP Slate should be easy to do. It would allow Microsoft to replicate the Apple ecosystem’s success (i.e. the iPad, iPhone OS 4, iTunes, the App Store, and individual apps). Obviously, Microsoft doesn’t manufacture and control Windows Phone 7-based hardware the way Apple does its own hardware. That said, Microsoft is requiring certain key features in all Windows phones: GPS, touch screen capabilities, and an accelerometer. Now, Microsoft should extend that concept to tablets running its software (if it doesn’t already).

One company that may agree with my strategy is Google. I’ve heard more than a few rumors that the company is working on a tablet with its Android mobile platform—not its Google Chrome OS. This isn’t exactly a surprise. Other companies, including Dell, are thinking the very same thing.

I know this is a radical idea, but if Microsoft and its partners hinder these new tablets with a full-blown OS and the standard world of ad-hoc Windows applications and utilities bought from non-homogenous sources, Apple and the iPad will win.

Resource:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362882,00.asp

According to Sudeep Bharati, director, developer tools for Microsoft India’s Visual Studio Team, the company is working with manufacturers to come up with lower-end phones for the Indian market.

‘Windows Phone 7’ is Microsoft’s upcoming mobile operating system and series of phones that Microsoft hopes will revive its presence in the mobile market, which is dominated by Apple and BlackBerry in the US and by Nokia in developing countries. In India, this means generating phones that offer a cost-advantage to the competitively priced Nokia phones.

“We are working on phones with 2 chassis, one with a screen resolution of 800*480 and the other with a lower resolution of 480*320. Phones with chassis 1 will be available by the end of 2010,” says Bharati.

The lower-end models will have at least 128 MB RAM, a lower-end processor and a 5 megapixel camera, unlike the higher-end models that need to have 1Ghz CPU GPS chip and 1GB of RAM.

The company is still in talks with hardware manufacturers on the feasibility of the plan and the pricing of these phones.

The higher-end models are expected to be priced similar to the Nexus One, which is available for $529 in the US. It is expected that the lower-end phones would be priced lower than Rs20,000.

Google too had earlier mentioned plans to release a stripped- down version of Nexus One in India this year.

Microsoft has laid special emphasis on the graphical component of the phone as games will come with Xbox Live support, which will allow users to play a game on their mobile, save it, continue the same game on their PCs and finish it on their Xbox 360.

Bharati also said that he’s expecting developers to release Live games which can be played on all three platforms as a package.

The tools that developers can use to make these games – Visual Studio 2010, Expression Blend – were developed under him at the Hyderabad centre of Microsoft. “Developers can make their games compatible for all the platforms using the same code. They don’t have to write separate applications for each platform. Also, games can be written for the phone using Silverlight as well,” he added.

Silverlight, Microsoft’s competitor to Adobe’s Flash, has seen a lot of developments with version 4 to be released later this year. At Microsoft Tech Ed, which was organised in Bangalore last week, a few of the developers demonstrated a way to make a fully interactive 3D object using Silverlight. The 3D capabilities of Silverlight will come in handy when developing games as well.

Resource:
http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report_microsoft-s-special-india-plans_1374157

“The low-cost version of the phone will have a different chassis than version 1 to be launched by 2010 end,” said Sudeep Bharati, director, developer tools for Microsoft India’s Visual Studio Team at Tech.Ed 2010 being held here.

The Windows Phone 7 may be priced at $500- $600, same price as Google’s Nexus One. Microsoft officials denied to give any details on pricing .

The Windows Phone 7 will come with a 5 Mega Pixel camera, a large multi-touch screen, Wi-fi , bluetooth and a minimum of 128 MB RAM.

“The new version may also have a smaller screen and will thus be priced lower to suit developing markets like India. We are in talks with OEMs to gain their feedback on a new chassis,” he said. The existing chassis of Windows Phone 7 (due to be launched in December ), carries three buttons.

One of the buttons will carry the Windows symbol and will act like the “start up” key in MS Windows for PCs. The phones to be manufactured by OEMs like HTC, Samsung and LG for Windows Phone 7 will carry a joint branding by Microsoft and the mobile phone maker, the details of which are being worked out.

Resource:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/software/MS-to-launch-low-cost-Windows-Phone-7/articleshow/5808152.cms

The Silverlight browser plug-in started out back in 2006 as a project called WPF/e – Windows Presentation Foundation Embedded – or as the team also called it, WPF Everywhere.

The idea was that it would ship for the browser in 2007 and then on Windows Mobile by the end of the year. Although Microsoft has demonstrated Silverlight Mobile several times since then, it’s only just arriving on mobile.

The Symbian beta is available now and Windows Phone Series 7 treats it as much more than an add-on; it’s one of the only two ways to write Windows Phone apps.

The version of Silverlight that will be on Windows Phone (that you can already try out with the emulator in the free Windows Phone Developer tools) is closer to the desktop version than you might expect (and it’s hardware accelerated like Silverlight on the desktop).

“This isn’t Silverlight ‘lite’, it isn’t Silverlight ‘different’, it is Silverlight,” corporate vice president Scott Guthrie told TechRadar. It includes “all the APIs of the current Silverlight version 3 and quite a bit of Silverlight 4; it’s a superset plus some extras”.

The difference is less about what the phone can run and more about thinking about what you need on a phone. “Pretty much all the features that we think are mobile-specific, that you’d want in the phone, are there,” says Guthrie.

“There are features like printing and more business features that don’t necessarily make sense in the phone, but all the graphics, the access to the webcam and microphone, those we already have.”

Optimising Silverlight for phones

Microsoft has also done a lot of optimisation of the way Silverlight is rendered on Windows Phone, mainly, says Guthrie, “because on the phone you have ARM processors typically and instead of one giant one you have about four cores the more work you’re doing on a processor – one quarter of an Arm processor – the slower your app is going to be. So we did a lot of work to partition the graphics operators out across multiple CPUs, and the animation system. We have to do that because otherwise you can’t get above 12 frames per second.”

Interestingly, he promises that those improvements will make their way back to desktop Silverlight; “probably in an update to Silverlight 4 and certainly by [the next version]”.

The other main difference between Windows and Windows Phone is that Silverlight on the desktop supports multi-tasking (it’s based on the Windows standard .NET components); although Guthrie says the Windows Phone OS is “a multi-tasking OS” third party Silverlight apps won’t run in the background.

One reason is battery life: “As soon as you allow arbitrary apps in the background, you run things down”.

The other is stability: “typically,” he claims, “when Windows crashes, it’s a driver – but you don’t blame your USB mouse, you blame Windows. We’re trying to be careful in terms of not providing a hand grenade for people to play with and not realise they can blow themselves up. We’re trying to make sure the user experience is good out of the box.”

For users frustrated by the notion that, say, the route in their navigation app would go away if they answer a phone call, he promises that the team is listening to feedback and “we’re going to continue to innovate and learn”.

Resource:
http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/how-much-of-silverlight-is-in-windows-phone-7–678987

LAS VEGAS—Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse announced a 4G-capable smartphone, the HTC Evo 4G, during a high-profile presentation at the CTIA Wireless 2010 conference on March 23. Boasting that it would take multimedia to “a whole new level,” Hesse demonstrated the device, which boasts a 4.3-inch capacitive touch-screen and the Google Android 2.1 operating system, for media and analysts.

The HTC Evo 4G will apparently make its debut during the summer. “It’s a fast device with a 1GHz Snapdragon processor,” Hesse told the audience. “It’s a terrific smartphone, even in 3G markets.” The device incorporates two cameras: an 8-megapixel module with auto-focus and an HD-capable camcorder, and a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera.

Hesse then introduced Peter Chou, CEO of HTC, who explained that HTC and Sprint had been working on the project hand-in-hand with Google since May 2008 to deliver what he described as “the world’s first fully integrated 4G consumer handset.”

Chou continued: “I think the Evo 4G gives a clear indicator of how mobile broadband experience is starting to move beyond the fixed-line broadband experience by what it offers in terms of local and personal relevance.” The HTC Evo 4G plays into that as a “holistic video and multimedia experience. As you know, the mobile video experience hasn’t been really embraced yet due to network speed limitations.”

As with other smartphones making their debut at CTIA, including the Samsung Galaxy S, the HTC Evo 4G will include a substantial social-networking element, aggregating content from a variety of services such as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr into a continually updated “flow.” Unlike some smartphones being shown at the conference, including Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 Series devices, the HTC Evo 4G will apparently provide Adobe Flash support.

Sprint made a limited number of HTC Evo 4G devices available to analysts and members of the press following the executive presentations. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the smartphones feel and operate very much like the Nexus One and HTC Droid Eris.

Sprint 4G capability is currently available in 27 markets, with plans to expand into Houston, Boston, Washington, D.C., New York City and San Francisco by the end of 2010.

Sprint has been working to ease its subscriber loss over the past few quarters, an effort helped by its recent acquisition of Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile USA. On Feb. 10, the company reported that it had lost a net 148,000 subscribers during the fourth quarter of 2009, better than the 545,000 who apparently left the network during the third quarter.

At the same time, the company has also been working to narrow its financial losses, which totaled $980 million for the fourth quarter—an improvement, nonetheless, over the $1.6 billion that had been lost during the same quarter a year earlier.

With that sort of financial pressure bearing down, Sprint has been gambling that users will be drawn to the prospect of a 4G network, with plans to invest an addition $1 billion into Clearwire’s WiMax 4G technology. Intel, Comcast, Time Warner and Bright House Networks have plans to contribute another $500 million to that effort.

Resource:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Sprint-Announces-HTC-Evo-4G-Emphasizing-Multimedia-735848/