Microsoft’s internal Windows Phone 7 apps shows off

August 4, 2010 | By Surur

Channel 9 today published a video showing off some internally developed Windows Phone 7 apps.

Demonstrated is a level app, unit convertor, translator, shopping list, weather app, stocks application and game.

Besides the game, most applications had pretty basic user interfaces, but many had hidden depths of extra functionality, such as the translator application which kept old translated phrases for off-line replay later, or the good charting available in the stocks app.

Also of note is the role of the back button as a form of task switcher, which worked pretty seamlessly in the demo.

Sean Mckenna, Windows Phone 7 Program Manager, said the source code for most of the applications will be available, making it easy for developers to build on the samples. Developers can keep an eye on developer.windowsphone.com for the code samples.

The demo does raise the question if the sparse text-based user interface will satisfy consumers or if they will prefer a more graphical user interface as found on other platforms. Let us know your thoughts below.

About Surur

Site Admin and Windows Phone enthusiast, he has been using Windows Mobile devices since before they were called PocketPC’s. He is currently sporting a HTC 7 Trophy.

Tagged developers, software, video, windows phone 7

http://twitter.com/rd3d @rd3d

I believe these apps are spartan visually by design (they are meant as samples that devs can build on and make their own).
Mika

OMG. Take a look @ 4:01 after he changed the theme to red. The home screen looks so weird! Red + Black + White background. Yucks! How can the phone attract consumers with designs like this, I wonder……

And also @ 3:59, is that some kind of h/w issue where the colors looks so "washed" and with the green backgound?
dos

@Mika Go troll somewhere else, The Samsung harware is test harware for developers but you would know that if u spent more than 1 mintue reading up on WP7

Mika

Dude! I'm not talking about the H/W. I'm talking about the UI in case you are not awake!

And, furthermore, if you wanna showcase something which is suppose to be already near end beta now, how can you still glitches like that?!

http://intensedebate.com/people/l3v5y l3v5y

The colours are fairly garish on the Samsung test devices, the colours may well look better on release devices.
http://intensedebate.com/people/l3v5y l3v5y

The very spartan design is something of a theme with WP7. It does work surprisingly well, since you don't have lots of popups bouncing at you, and the few things moving (like live tiles) get your attention in a way that's not massively distracting.