Windows Phone 7, developed by Microsoft is the successor to its Windows Mobile platform.
It is aimed at the consumer market instead of the enterprise market like its predecessor and was launched in Australia late 2010. Windows Phone 7 offers a new user interface based on a theme called Metro.
Windows Phone 7 home screen (also called the “Start screen”), is made up of Tiles. Tiles can provide links to applications, features, functions and individual items. 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 features of Windows Phone 7 are organized into “hubs”, which combine local and online content via Windows Phone 7′s integration with popular social networks such as Facebook and Windows Live. 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 Music and Video (which integrates with Zune), Games (which integrates with Xbox Live), Windows Phone Marketplace, and Microsoft Office.
