It’s been exactly a year since Windows Phone 7 was first seen at last year’s Mobile World Congress. A year on, while it hasn’t exactly set the sales charts on fire, the platform has been appreciated by consumers and critics alike. That said, it faced some serious shortcomings as a smartphone OS with no support for copy paste, non-availability on CDMA networks and non-ability to multitask. Anyway, all these would be changed when the first major update to the platform arrives in the second week of March that would endow it with copy & paste and faster application performance.
It would be soon followed by support for CDMA Networks that would enable the OS to arrive on CDMA phones on operators like Verizon and Sprint. The first CDMA devices are expected by the first half of this very year. Another long sought after feature is Twitter integration to the People Hub. Currently, only Facebook is integrated on to the phone. This would happen by the second half of 2011.
Next in line are features like document sharing and the ability to store your files in the Cloud by using Windows Live SkyDrive. A major update to the browser would graduate the browser version to IE9. It would also be enabled with HTML5 support and hardware accelerated graphics as the PC version.
The most important addition would be the much needed ability to multitask expected to arrive in the second half of 2011. Microsoft would be briefing WP7 developers about these additions at the upcoming MIX conference in April.
The features would surely enhance the user experience on Windows Phone 7 devices which frankly, feels crippled without these especially in the company of other smartphone operating systems which offer these functionalities.
[Via Windows Team Blog]
