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Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 London event liveblog

Press the 'Start' button at 2pm BST

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 London event liveblog
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At 2pm British Summer Time (that’s GMT +1, folks) Microsoft will be unveiling its new shining mobile light, Windows Phone 7, to a bunch of journalists in London. Pocket Gamer will be in attendance.

I’ll be your pilot for this latest liveblog, in charge of bringing you everything from what the confirmed features are, any hilarious japes on stage, and how good the seating and/or lighting is (maybe not that last bit).

It’s sure to be packed with mildly interesting-to-relatively interesting clumps of information, so do be sure to check back live at 2pm so we can give you the lowdown on what’s what in the new-look Windows platform.

14:27 Well, here we are. Your proposed pilot Will Wilson can't get a wi-fi signal, so you're stuck with me, your bitter, twister commentator - Jon Jordan.

We in the ICA waiting for the New York leg of this operation to start up. Steve Ballmer's lost backstage or some such.

14:32 Slighly whiny girl singer songwriter playing. Perhaps Kate Nash, or her little sister.

PR says the wi-fi doesn't work because of the design of the theatre. Maybe they should have thought about that...

14:40 Ballmer online in New York:

"I’ve been looking forward to this day for sometime. It’s a different kind of a phone. What you’re going to do with your phone. Get in, out and back to life. As fast and simple as possible. A thoroughly modern phone. We’re taken a different tack.

“Always delightful and wonderfully mine” - Ballmer’s on weeds or something. "Delightful for consumers and developers."

14:44: It's all "Mine" too. Mine in terms of friends, avatars.

14:45 Nine phones available in US [and UK] in November [21 Oct UK]. Dell, HTC, LG, Samsung. Range of screens, inputs, services etc.

"Take your world and play it on TV," using the LG phone.

"Consistent delight and choices that are wonderfully your own," Ballmer's now drinking the kool aid.

14:46: 30 operators worldwide but as Ballmer hands over to AT&T, in London we turn over to Andy Less, MS president of mobile communications biz. "It's a big day for me." Bully for you.

14:47: Old quote - MS should hire Bozo the clown to run Windows Mobile so when Lees got the job he reset the strategy for the consumer.

"Today, people are becoming slaves to their phones. We are accountable for the whole ecosystem," he says.

Microsoft's mantra is "The customer is king." - This guy's is a genius, or Bozo the clown.

14:50 Terrible marketing catchphrase. "Glance and go, not stop and stare".

14:51 Some dude is now showing us WP7 in action. Hey, it's Aaron Woodman. He's not English, so he's very enthusiastic.

14:52 Talking about the live tiles approach of the homepage. Basically live widgets that update in realtime. “The starting face of WP7”.

Dealing with email. Yawn. He doesn’t want to be overwhelmed by email on the weekend. Links with Calendar. As you’d imagine, fairly prosaic. Integration between mail and calendar means you can do stuff, like... work stuff.

14:55 Bing. It's really relevant. "The information is super relevant" - indeed.

14:56 Camera - the third most popular thing to do with your phone.

14:57 Windows Phone Hubs - with more services comes the cost of complexity, which Hubs are designed to fix.

There are 6 Hubs to integrate data and phone usage - People, pictures, office, marketplace, games and music & film.

15:00 The point is to make the community open on your phone, so you get updates to social status, to your photos using the Zune PC experience.

Basically the focus of Windows Phone 7 is that it's well integrated with other Microsoft services, which is great if you use a lot of Microsoft services such as syncing with your Windows 7 PC etc. Probably not so good for Google or Apple users.

15:04 Now talking about Office hub, which just shares things with the cloud.

15:05 Music - make your phone like a great music player not a phone, which is why MS is using Zune software to share playlists. Applications such as YouTube are also integrated within the hub, and it tracks your usage of music.

And Zune Pass, its subscription service is now live in the UK, so you stream either OTA or wi-fi.

15:07 500,000 tools downloads for WP7 by developers.

15:09 Now talking about apps. Train times and Tesco.

Now Games. 40 percent of apps are games (on App Store). Game hub organises your games. It uses your Xbox Live avatar and your Gamerscore. 23 million people on Xbox Live globally.

15:11 EA Mobile will be on WP7 - demoing The Sims 3, althougt interesting he takes another phone to show this so we're don't see the loading time from the hub.

15:13 Mr Lees is back. Copy and paste will be added to WP7 next year as a firmware update.

15:14 October 21 UK launch. All phones have similar functionality but each OEM has innovated.

HTC 7 Mozart - single uniframe Aluminium body and 8MP camera and Xenon flash. Only with Orange.

Samsung Omnia 7 - 4 inch AMOLED screen, 5MP camera. Orange, 3 and T-Mobile.

HTC 7 Trophy - small and compact. Dolby sound. Vodafone

LG Optimus 7 - can play to DLNA, Vodafone

HTC HD7 - 4.3 AMOLED screen, largest screen with kickstand. O2

Dell Venue Pro - slide with QWERTY keypad. 3

15:20 Tom Alexander, CEO of Everything Everywhere (Orange/T-Mobile UK) comes on stage to say We need a big vision. We have the opportunity to be at the heart of the smartphone revolution.

He's also talking some more but not actually saying anything real. Kinda marketing chat that's well rounded but fairly loose, although T-Mobile and Orange are now sharing networks.

Orange and T-Mobile's WP7 will come with usual pre-installed apps.

15:24 Ashley's back. Who's Ashley? You know Ashley.

15:28 Hello moist people, it's Stephen Fry...

“Technology is about people first,” say Fry, getting enthusiastic in the only way the English can. A little embarrassingly in other words.

“I have felt enormous pleasure in using this phone. It has its deficiencies as did the first iPhone."

“You have to be very stony hearted not to welcome a new player. I love Apple, but I’m not a monotheist.”

“I never thought I would stand on a stage and praise Microsoft," closely followed by “The shit on my shoe is better than Vista.”

And then it's all over, and the delightful tunes of Kate Nash play as we file out for a hands out.

Will Wilson
Will Wilson
Will's obsession with gaming started off with sketching Laser Squad levels on pads of paper, but recently grew into violently shouting "Tango Down!" at random strangers on the street. He now directs that positive energy into his writing (due in no small part to a binding court order).