As I am sure you all know I went to London for the launch of Windows Phone 7 yesterday and it was an absolutely great day. The venue was the Institute of Contemporary Art situated along the Mall, the long driveway up to Buckingham Palace. I arrived early and met Tom Warren, my Neowin boss, with whom I spent the rest of the day. After a while we were invited to have drinks in the bar and then after that we waited outside the main auditorium where I had a short chat with Charlie Kindel.
Once in the rather warm auditorium for the delayed US launch event to get underway. Once we were given the go ahead Ashley Highfield, Managing Director, Consumer Online, UK, took the stage and was talking about Windows Phone 7 and other great Microsoft products within the last year…until he was interrupted by Steve Ballmer who was simulcast to London.
We thought it was amusing when 9 Windows Phone 7s appeared in front of Steve Ballmer.
Following Ballmer’s speech about Windows Phone 7 Andy Lees, President, Mobile Communications Business, then took the stage and told about what exactly Windows Phone 7 and the reasoning for its design, etc.
Following this we were treated to a demo of the new OS from Aaron Woodman. He went through all the hubs and even showed us a Tesco App which stores a user’s data and list in the cloud to be accessed on other platforms, if followed the Metro guidelines. Aaron also showed us a train time app that looked to be an official app from National Rail which could prove to be a very useful app for us Brits and our somewhat unreliable rail infrastructure.
After the extensive demo the 6 Windows Phone 7s were then announced and which networks would be selling which ones.
Next we were told how Orange will be Microsoft’s lead network partner in the UK and then the CEO of Orange, Tom Alexander, and soon to be Everything Everywhere, the joint venture between Orange and TMobile, took the stage. He explained how he hoped that the new venture would bring the best mobile experience to the UK with effectively two networks for the price of one.
Next Ashley Highfield retook the stage and asked us if we knew who had said this about Windows Mobile a few years back, some people in the audience did.
Stephen Fry was then introduced and gave his impressions of Windows Phone 7 after having used several devices for 2 weeks. He also spoke more broadly of the mobile devices ecosystem and made a very amusing comment about Windows Vista which was received with much laughter from the room.
BusinessZone were able to video most of Fry’s speech, I wont paraphrase what he said as it was all so good.
Stephen Fry pretty much wrapped up the announcement but before we were herded upstairs to look at the devices I was able to take a shot of all 6 devices in row.
Upstairs were the various devices and networks on hand to explain the specification and features of their devices. I didn’t bother to take photos of these devices as I knew Tom Warren was which you can see over at Neowin.
However when looking at the devices so Stephen Fry came into the room I was in so of course I stopped looking at devices and hover around him to meet the man. Tom Warren was then able to interview we had with Mr Fry, sadly the audio towards the beginning was rubbish so has been edited out but you can still hear me nearly fluff the question up.
All in all yesterday was a great day and I’ll let you know what I thought of the devices I played with yesterday and some other info in another blog post.
