News · 19 Jul 2010 · MTW Editorial Team
Microsoft’s US PR has done something really interesting: They’ve handed out Samsung Taylor development phones to several blogs/websites last week so they can do their own preview of Windows Phone 7. Unfortunately in true MS fashion it kinda backfired on them…Yeah you want to get maximum exposure but don’t give exclusives to sites who always trash your product no matter the quality of said product (BGR, Gartenberg?!, WTF? …).To balance that out you can also read more neutral reporting at Engadget (<- good in-depth stuff ), Cnet, PC Mag, Wired (only a 3mins video, what?), Zdnet (<–this one’s the best IMO) or go to the other side of the spectrum with a more MS “biased” preview from Paull Thurrott’s. All in all you won’t learn anything really new (but you should check them anyway to see how things look like) and my suggestion would be to download the Windows Phone 7 Beta SDK and play a bit with the unlocked Emulator, because everything (minus the marketplace/Zune) is available in there. Better yet, start developing applications! I’m not sure if this (giving away dev phones to big sites and blogs) was a good idea especially when developers have been busting their asses to develop apps and are still waiting for real handsets to continue work on their products. Thankfully I’ve hand the chance of seeing and playing with Windows Phone 7 devices several times and I’m really confident about the future of the project if it’s executed on time (especially the updates). Right now, Windows Phone 7 devices should only be compared to Android / iPhone’s with ZERO third Party apps installed.
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