Other than some CDMA handsets I'm not sure now that we'll see any new hardware until Nokia gets their first WP7 handset out at the end of the year (assuming they can last till then, the WP7 announcement has cost them 20% of their value in just 2 days). Microsoft offering Nokia special deals and piles of cash has to have the other WP7 "partners" rethinking their interest.

Come one..HTC/LG/Motorola/Samsung with the exception of Dell, these are cheaply made. I want the REAL HW, and I do believe Nokia will be bringing that to us. Frankly, Android phones are starting to look alike, and it is so boring.

Yeah I was pleasantly surprised by the demo. That one was the biggest feature missing. Allows for a lot of new apps and shut up the critics.

IM clients don't need to be running, do they? Flory uses push (for tile and toast) notification very well. You don't have to keep it running to receive messages. It takes a few seconds to load up and read the message but with the fast switching, I guess you can keep it running in the background and wake up real fast when you need it.

Sure, let's start to build the list of exceptions. Probably they demoed just an example, but we do not trust them and in fact, at the end of the day, music playing 3rd party application may be the only multitasking-enabled programs.

When they mentioned "the most operator-friendly OS", my impression was: "Haha, so no VoIP!"

http://www.wpcentral.com/multitasking-support-wp7…

Hi all, Dieter Bohn here. Tim has broken it down pretty darn well above based on what Microsoft presented today. On top that that, we have a few more details on how multitasking will work on Windows Phone 7 – join us after the break!
So here's the deal: everybody is using the term "Multitasking" in different ways and so it's essentailly more of a marketing term for "get your apps launched quickly" than "apps run in real time in the background." Apple was derided a bit for not having "true multitasking" with their iOS update – instead they had background services – but now that it's out nobody really seems to mind.
I suspect that it's going to be a similar story once Microsoft unveils the full details on how multitasking on Windows Phone operates. In essence, when you leave an app what it does it very quickly pause and save its state in "deep hibernation." Then when you relaunch it, it is able to grab that information and relaunch very quickly. So you could accuse Microsoft of having "multitasking lite." However apps will be able ot perform certain services in the background – the example of Slacker being able to continue playing music even after you leave the app is a perfect example. This is very similar to what Apple did with iOS multitasking – apps freeze in the background but there is a discrete set of services that they can continue to use when they're not in front.
We also hear that certain apps will be able to periodically 'wake' themselves while in the background to grab small pieces of data. So in a well-written third party app you will still see new infomration when you re-open it. The perfect example is a Twitter app that could grab new tweets from time to time so that when you reopen it after it's been closed for a long time it won't feel so out of date.
So to sum up: Multitasking on Windows Phone 7 looks to be a combination of very fast pause, hibernate, and wake states combined with a set of multitasking services like iOS offers. If that doesn't sound like true multitasking to you, well, we bet that when you actually use it that won't matter – just ask an iOS user how often their version of multitasking gets in the way. iOS offers local notifications, push notifications, task completion (for finishing uploads), saved state, audio, voip, and location. For the vast majority of use cases, that covers most users.
We're sure that Microsoft will clear up exactly which multitasking services apps will be able to take advantage of while in their background hibernation state. So far we know that music can play and apps can periodically grab new information. Hopefully there will be more to come.

Why update specs when the ones you have out are stated as being "the minimum"? Any OEM can go higher than what MS has stated as the base, there's no reason why WP7 shouldn't already have support for dual core ARM cpu's and so on. More storage and RAM isn't something that needs a OS update to get working either, so ya, MS doesn't have to force higher hardware specs, OEMs should just want to do it on their own.

The only point of a minimum spec if at launch of the OS, everyone should stop asking why they are not updating the minimum specs, that just means it will piss off the rest of the WP7 users who suddenly dont meet minimum spec after a few months.

MS and Nokia just joint their forces…. I believe NK will have something releasing further down the year…. Is still too early to talk about new hardwares because dual cores will be here to stay since it is already available on Android. Implementing dual cores for WP7 I doubt will be an issue, and how knows, MS will release update that will fully utilities the power of dual cores?

omg thank you!!!! i am so sick of android fans overstating how GREAT android is damn I have an EVO and yes its packed with features but damn I cant use them more than 5 hours without a charge. I charged that phone 3 times a day please stop pretending that android doesnt have issues. i will rather ms release a feature packed product that i can use without needing to root or attach a humpback whale looking battery to it!!!! by the way im loving my venue pro and thats what up lol

Agreed too. We need the OS to be polished as goo as possible, before talking about fully utilizing latest hardware…. I still seeing the new SGS 2 lags although it is running on a dual core.