Pocket-lint.com and Electricpig.co.uk were both able to use LG’s Panther device, first seen at MWC in February, today in UK as Microsoft were demoing the device to a few websites. Both the mobile OS and the LG device are said to have appeared solid and very near completion and the websites took plenty of pictures for you Windows Phone 7 fans out there.
From the above image small things to note are that the email tile now has an Outlook icon and Internet Explorer icon is now completely white. Also both websites were impressed with the Smart Sensing technology, Microsoft’s replacement to copy and paste that is able to detect content like addresses that are normally required to be copied. Bing and Office integration on the device were praised.
The most important thing to take away from these articles is that the Zune Marketplace will be coming to UK in time for the launch of Windows Phone 7, likely to be September. We knew Microsoft were going to be bringing Zune to the rest of the world but we didn’t know whether it would be available at the launch of the new mobile, now we do. It might be that Zune is released to the UK, and likely all other countries Windows Phone 7 is being released, on the day the phones go on sale but the Zune Marketplace could also be released over the summer some time before the phones are released. I can’t imagine Microsoft want to be launching too much on a single day, it will only increase the likelihood that something goes wrong.
Another interesting piece of information about Zune on Windows Phone 7 is “that it will that it will find album art for you, through the phone itself. If you’ve dragged and dropped MP3s from a different location, and they don’t have art or are missing other metadata, Windows Phone 7 will find the details for you.” That sounds like a good feature to me and its not something the iPhone does.
As you know I can’t wait for Windows Phone 7 and Zune to come to the UK so this news is great to me, we should only be looking at a few months now for both to be released. In the mean time there will no doubt be lots of leaks about other Windows Phone 7 devices.
