LinkedIn profiles reveal Windows Mobile 7 clues, folks with really great people skills

Much to Ballmer's chagrin, Windows Mobile 7 is still a rather nebulous thing, but it's getting a wee bit clearer thanks to some bits and bytes extracted from the LinkedIn profiles of current and former Microsofties and Motorolites, the latter group indicating the company that brought you the Droid is also rather committed to Microsoft's theoretical new hotness. Various experience line-items reveal that the OS will support Silverlight (natch), will have a new navigation app, and will include much better game support along with some sort of Zune integration -- finally. Now, any guesses on how many people will lose their jobs for being so open about what those positions entail?

[Federaly Posted Dec 2nd 2009 7:55AM]

Super keen for windows mobile 7. Have 6.5.3 atm shadowlines build and I actually quite enjoy the current version VERY quick and VERY smooth and stable. Actually funnily enough the Sense build is shady(no pun.) and often slow to pick up, Though that may be because I'm using a TouchDiamond2 and not a HD2 XD.

Bottom line, WinMo7 My next phone!

[jcrain Posted Dec 2nd 2009 10:01AM]

@Federaly
How do you go about getting these builds? I am running a stock Imagio with 6.5 and would love to try the latest build. I assume that means I would have to flash the ROM, but it might be worth it.

[lamzor Posted Dec 2nd 2009 10:50AM]

@jcrain all you need is to check forum.xda-developers.com
i bought my HTC diamond2 yesterday. spent hours on the forums, but found out anything i need.
btw you can dump your ROM and backup it, in case that you want to apply guarantee(there also list of stock ROMs, but i wanted mine to be sure).
each change done to ROM or booting software(like HARDSPL) can be reverted to default state.
good luck.

[RandomGuy Posted Dec 2nd 2009 10:59AM]

@jcrain XDA developers is the place to go. The site is a monstrosity to navigate and a chaotic free-for-all when it comes to various builds and what is there.

It is definitely not a friendly place for newbies, and they don't take kindly to people asking questions that could be answered by someone searching through one of many thousand+ message threads.

So if you don't mind playing a little needle-in-the-haystack, XDA Developers is an incredible resource for updating to a newer, better, cleaner ROM. I just wish they somehow made it more friendly, so that it would be easier for average users to update their phones, and then maybe, just maybe, WinMo could get away from its horrid reputation.

[roach Posted Dec 2nd 2009 11:17AM]

@jcrain
Any newbie love for getting 6.5 into my diamond touch CDMA (Telus)? I am a complete newbie, so any simple easy how-to links?

[ai4281 Posted Dec 2nd 2009 11:25AM]

@roach Try PPCgeeks. I have the same phone, and I am running a VGA version of Sense UI (from HD2) on 6.5. It's glorious!

[NainRouge Posted Dec 2nd 2009 7:55AM]

Unfortunately this is still a bunch of smoke and mirrors. Call me when there's a real product staring you in the face.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 2nd 2009 8:16AM]

@NainRouge Pick up.

[Cy Starkman Posted Dec 2nd 2009 8:20AM]

I tried but there was just a dead line.

[NainRouge Posted Dec 2nd 2009 10:04AM]

Where's a screenshot?

Where's a technical demo?

Where's an announcement besides "we should've already had this out"?

I mean, I'll be stoked when it does make it to market, but until then there's nothing to do but dream.

[ran Posted Dec 2nd 2009 7:55AM]

Can't anyone just post what they do without real verification?

It's not like Microsoft would just go and confirm or deny this.

[jakem Posted Dec 2nd 2009 7:58AM]

What is natch supposed to mean?

[NainRouge Posted Dec 2nd 2009 8:18AM]

Naturally?

[GeekGirl Posted Dec 2nd 2009 8:17AM]

I had a Diamond and once a day at least it would freeze, then you had to take the battery out to get it going:(

[link83 Posted Dec 2nd 2009 8:43AM]

@(Unverified)

I had a Touch Diamond too, and I've never seen it crash of freeze.

You probably had an hardware problem with your Diamond, it was clearly not a problem related to Windows Mobile.

However I had an HTC Touch 1 and it crashed once a day during an hot summer... still not software related!

[mschmidler Posted Dec 2nd 2009 8:33AM]

Anyone noticing that those LinkedIn-profiles and job-postings are the only things we have seen for MONTHS now? Microsoft really does a good job in keeping its emplyees quiet (and IMO that does mean WM7 will be great).

[ai4281 Posted Dec 2nd 2009 11:30AM]

@(Unverified) Or maybe they're not doing anything actively right now. Seriously, all the leaks we've seen on WinMo7 is just some screen shots that look the same from ones we saw years ago.

I gave up on them after they put out 6.5...

[Bjay Posted Dec 2nd 2009 8:40AM]

I hope it all come out well for Windows Mobile 7 because dats what i want......my fingers are still crossed anyways

[artshark Posted Dec 2nd 2009 8:47AM]

now, suits don't play games, do they?

[link83 Posted Dec 2nd 2009 8:55AM]

It is no surprise that Silverlight native API (not managed, as opposite to desktop version) will be a foundation for WM7.
Windows CE 6 R3 ,which has been released a few months ago, has brought a native Silverlight hardware accelerated API. I don't see how microsoft could end up not using it in Windows Mobile 7!

This will be great news for developers, designers, AND end users! (and very good news for Windows Mobile platform too!)

It's currently pretty hard to develop beautifuls UIs for applications on Windows Mobile (but not impossible). This will make Windows Mobile the best mobile platform for developing rich user interfaces.

[lituus Posted Dec 3rd 2009 9:20AM]

@link83
here's more if you're interested:
lituuslimacon.blogspot.com/2009/10/project-pink-windows-mobile-7-zune.html#more

that blog (mine) has some more on this stuff. And MobileTechWorld is also a good place to check out for WinMo specific news. (not mine)

I'm not direct linking cos I don't wanna link-spam.

[flett Posted Dec 2nd 2009 9:10AM]

so, using silverlight, can you just watch normal flash videos, like youtube? I did the demo video on the silverlight webiste, it was nothing short of amazing

[RandomGuy Posted Dec 2nd 2009 11:08AM]

@(Unverified) Well no you can't watch Flash content on Silverlight, but you can watch Silverlight content on Silverlight. So it is competition to Flash, and from what I have seen it beats Flash hands down.

I was a bit skeptical of MS building a Flash Killer, but they have successfully built a platform that is far less bloated, runs on slower machines more smoothly, is cheaper to license and deploy, and can be played on numerous systems. The biggest drawback is that everyone is already heavily invested in Flash, whether it be existing infrastructure or talent pool. Overcoming that several year headstart by Adobe is going to take a while, but they already have made way with Streaming Netflix being Silverlight only now. I honestly though Netbooks difficulties with full screen flash would get sites to switch to Silverlight, but it looks like that is less likely as Flash is finally improving.

In the end I suppose HTML5 will kill them both.

[thefifthheat Posted Dec 2nd 2009 3:03PM]

@(Unverified) Or watch netflix on your phone....
Killer app?!

[yarlee Posted Dec 2nd 2009 10:59AM]

I don't think there are called Motorolites, but Motorolans.

[alex904 Posted Dec 3rd 2009 12:15AM]

What's so amazing about watching videos? :) Silverlight does not let you watch flash videos, it works with proprietary Microsoft Silverlight transport and MP4 format. Olympic games on-line, Netflix, MSDN videos and some TV channels on-line are using it because Mcirosoft pays big $ for that.