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Microsoft Releases Final Windows Phone 7 Dev Tools
cgriffin21 writes "Microsoft on Thursday released the final Windows Phone 7 developer tools to manufacturing, giving coders a couple of weeks' lead time to get their apps ready for the launch of the Windows Phone Marketplace in early October. Microsoft released the Windows Phone 7 OS to manufacturing on Sept. 1, and its OEM partners are in the process of testing it on handsets. The Windows Phone 7 developer tools are the final piece of the puzzle for Microsoft, which is now ready to march back into a mobile market where it has fallen alarmingly behind the leaders."
In related news, CNET reports that Windows Phone 7 will only be available for GSM networks at launch, with a CDMA version planned for the first half of next year. This rules out Sprint and Verizon for launch.
Given the awful track record of WinME-family phones, I'd expect that the availability of Windows Phone 7 phones (doesn't that just trip off the tongue) will be largely dependent on Microsoft's willingness to "partner" with OEMs, in the same way that a scrawny fugly guy "partners" with an expensive hooker.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
> This rules out Sprint and Verizon for launch.
In our backwards little country -- just north of y'all -- the big CDMA vendors have realized that CDMA sucks from pretty much every standpoint that matters. Bell and Telus have rolled out nation-wide HSPA networks.
And I have yet to see a 16-year old girl saying things like "I would have bought an iPhone, except with time-division multiplexing, there is a finite cell capacity; if Apple had rolled out code-division we could simply increase tower load by reducing quality of service"
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
It's just so funny that you americans are forgetting symbian and meego, which are backed by still the biggest smartphone manufacturer nokia...