I’ve bee watching Channel 9 with WP7 announcements and there are very interesting things that are coming to the platform, both developer and end-user oriented. In no particular order, with my comments:

  • Jump list (on letters using LongListSelector) and app search directly in application list. It’s a welcome change. When number of installed apps is past of 30-40, it’s very hard to find quickly the right app. I’ve tried to imagine a solution for this problem and came to idea that MS will let user’s create “folder” tiles to group apps, similarly to iOS. How will work solution from MS we’ll see when Mango will be released.
  • Marketplace improvements and better search. Another much welcomed change. Whenever I had to find something in Marketplace I would rather fire up Zune if it’s available. Same, Games Hub is nice addition.
  • Third party apps integrated in search.
  • Improved hardware interoperability. Camera, gyro, compass. I’m cool for this stuff.
  • Improved live tiles. You can “pin” part of your apps to a tile. Extremely powerful feature, if done right (by developer). Then you have animations and status updates on a tile, directly from the app and not a remote service.
  • MULTITASKING. I’ve been waiting for it. “Only back” navigation isn’t the greatest experience when you’re trying to do few things at the same time. App switching speed is very impressive. I’ve seen demos of Blackberry’s PlayBook based on QNX and running few resource heavy games at once and I’ve beed astounded by how system manages that. I’m glad to see that WP7 offers similar experience.
  • Sockets & low level network API. Skype is coming. Hope to see a decent IM app supporting ICQ & GTalk soon. And a VoIP/Softphone client too…
  • SQL CE database. Good to have, may be useful for data intensive apps & offline capabilities.
  • IE9 & HTML5.

So, Microsoft took a slow start strategy with Windows Phone 7. Got it out robust but low on features if compared with iOS & Android. Made first update (the NoDo) to make small improvements and polish the update process itself. And Mango will be coming this year to put it on par with competitors. When you add to the game the power of Microsoft’s marketing machine, strong partner relationships and Nokia deal, then forecasts about WP7 getting over iPhone by 2015 sound very realistic.