What is Windows Phone 7 and how is it different from Windows Mobile?

Lets begin this article with a little history of Microsoft operating systems. As some of you would remember, just a few years ago we had devices in Pakistan from manufacturers like Imate, O2 and Acer called PDAs. These devices were usually for niche audiences and a normal mobile user rarely came across someone using these. Mostly people in business environment or tech-savvy people would be seen with these. Almost all of these used Microsoft Windows Mobile operating system which according to its User Interface was somewhat like a stripped down version of Microsoft's Windows for desktop PCs. This OS wasn't that user friendly and navigating the menus and the applications was a pain, but since this was the only OS present at that time, there was nothing people could do and they just learned to accomodate. At this time Microsoft was an obsolute leader in the mobile OS space. From the year 2000 till 2010, Microsoft enjoyed a monoploy with little competition for a solid 10 years.

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Fast forward to 2010 and you see that the Mobile OS space is all but crowded now. The balckberry OS, Apple's iOS, Palm's WebOS and the strongest contender right now, Google's Android OS have all but obliterated Microsoft's dmoninance in this market. The creation of Capacitative displays for mobiles devices as well as the continued progress in processor power and storage has allowed much better optimization in operating systems now, than was even possible at the time windows mobiles came along.

Foreseeing a the large amount of competition slowly building up, Microsoft started development of a new Operating system from scratch with no backward compatability with Windows Mobile, leaving previous owners out to dry. They had to do this to survive otherwise they have no chance to stay in the game.

Windows phone 7 was announced on the 15th of Feb, 2010 after much anticipation. The first 10 devices runninf this OS were announced last week with huge appreciation. Microsoft's venture into a purely