Windows Mobile 7 leaks are springing up left, right and centre ahead of Mobile World Congress (MWC) next month, and now a new raft of juicy deets has hit, with a launch date, hardware partners and new features all being outed. And what do you know? Xbox Live integration has made the cut.
DigiTimes has just published some juicy gossip in Windows Mobile 7 straight from inside sources. MWC will see the launch of Windows Mobile 6.6, but Microsoft will also reportedly announce commercial availability for the heavily revamped and improved Windows Mobile 7 too. Windows Mobile 7 will be made available to hardware manufacturers in September, allowing the first phones adopting it to roll out in late 2010 or early next year.
And those hardware partners? The report also says Microsoft has lined up Samsung, LG, Toshiba, Asus and Acer to help develop Windows Mobile 7 products.
Windows Mobile 7 phones coming 2010, will run legacy apps
That should come as no surprise since all currently produce Windows Mobile 6.x phones, but there’s one final bit of detail you’ll want to hear too: Windows Mobile 7 will “support Zune, Xbox Live and Silverlight” (Microsoft’s equivalent of Flash for streaming web video)”.
It’s not clear to what extent Xbox Live will integrate with Windows Mobile 7, but considering how high powered smartphones are becoming, we’d love to be able to play Xbox Live Community games at the very least on a small screen, rather than just check GamerScore repeatedly.
Microsoft has yet to make anything official of course, but we’ll be live at Mobile World Congress next month to check out what it’s got to offer.
