Lots has been said about the Windows Phone 7 hubs. Today, we got our grubby mitts on a Samsung prototype and had a closer look at how revolutionary their UI really is, and found that, by giving developers an unexpected freedom, there’s hope for Windows Phone 7 yet.
Before you get excited though, the Samsung Taylor prototype we played with is just a Windows Phone 7 prototype, and there are no plans for it be released into the wild any time soon, although it is the one developers are fiddling with as we speak.
Windows Phone 7 are allowing developers not only to build their own apps, but to build their own hubs too. So with no extra permissions needed from Microsoft over and above a standard app, a developer can construct an app as a hub, meaning it can be tiled up on the home page, (standalone apps can also do this) but also that other apps can plug into it, and the hub can integrate that data together.
This means that, for example, The Times could build its app as a news hub, which The Sun, News of the World, and the Sunday Times could plug their apps into, creating a News International hub for Windows Phone 7 (should anyone want such a thing). All it needs is for the developer of the hub to share the code so that others can plug in. So in theory, different organisations could work together to plug into a hub.
The restrictions are design based, meaning that while it might sound like a great solution for those hankering after something akin to customiseable folders, organisations will have little freedom to do any branding, and will be restricted to branding themselves as integrated parts of the Windows Phone 7 UI.
There’s a positive and negative here – allowing third party hubs to be created means the UI can deal with large amounts of applications and content. However, the control of whether third party hubs exist is on the back of developers and the organisations developing for Windows Phone 7. The user has no control, and depends on the organisations to come up with that content so they can control a busy UI.
