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Review We've been playing with a Windows Phone 7 device for a week or so now, and have been surprisingly impressed with the detail, though sadly disappointed with the bigger picture. Microsoft has put a lot into Windows Phone 7, and plans to spend a fortune developing it, but while the interface and functionality has a host of beautiful touches - from the dots that fly around the place showing activity, to the elegant animations bringing a minimalist interface to life - the whole fails to satisfy entirely and one can't help feeling there's still a lot of work to...

Introduction This isn’t going to be a story about Microsoft’s return to dominance. Nor is it going to be the story of Microsoft’s failure to compete in the smartphone space. These mobile wars have only just begun and despite the advantage enjoyed by Apple and Google, there is no end in sight. In another twelve months we will see fierce competition from HP, Microsoft and Nokia. There’s a lot at stake, and no company is willing to give up the opportunity to own the next-PC market without a hell of a fight. Today is the beginning of Microsoft’s fight. In...

Microsoft's Ashley Highfield shows Rory Cellan-Jones the mobile operating system's features. Microsoft has launched Windows Phone 7, its latest attempt to break into the lucrative smartphone market. Until now the company has failed to provide a credible challenge to rival operating systems from Apple, Google, Research in Motion and Nokia. Mobile phone operators predict smartphones will have a 70% market share in just three years.Microsoft says it has made Windows Phone 7 more user-friendly, rebuilding the operating system from bottom up.The phone system's experience is built around so-called hubs that aggregate content like contacts, pictures, documents, and music and video....

Microsoft is positioning its upcoming Windows Phone 7 smartphone OS, planned for release this October, as an "ad-serving machine."That's how Microsoft exec Kostas Mallios described the OS... Microsoft's smartphone OS will provide advertisers with three levels of ad-serving "opportunities" in addition to standard browser-based ads, and in a radical departure from the tacks taken by either Apple's app-based iAds, or Google's browser-centric world, two of Windows Phone 7's ad-delivery systems will enable ads to be sent outside of either apps or the browser. The first level of ad-serving is app-based. No surprise there... The next two ad-serving schemes, however, break...