The software.

This is the cool stuff, what everyone is on about. Is the market now a 3-horse race, as MS CEO said? Am I going to like it? Will I be labelled a fanboi? All these answers in my next sentence. Yes. See? I deliver. None of that next week stuff.

Ah, the software. First, let me say this: if you are a hardcore Linux fan, if you spell Microsoft with a dollar sign, if you are adverse to paying a dollar or two for a good app, stop now. This is going to give you an ulcer.

Microsoft launched WP7 as a new product. And it is new, it is NOT Windows Mobile 7, the whole thing was built from the ground up, based on W7, for a phone and it shows. It was born on a phone, to be a phone. Not a small tablet, not a mini PC, it is a phone and it knows.

WP 7.0 entered life as beta. WP 7.1 (Branded 7.5 at the marketing), codenamed Mango boasts 500+ improvements, patches and new implementations, and it is, finally, ready for the light. Not the full light, as we'll see, but one or two spotlights can't hurt.

The OS is built around the Metro interface concept, which does away with desktops and fits everything into 2 "desktops". One "home", that is made of tiles user pins, and a second that is basically a list of installed applications.

The home has 2 rows of tiles, and goes down forever, seamlessly. One can have larger tiles, but generally doesn't. Images, for example, has a large tile, for obvious reasons. So does Calendar, for less obvious reasons. But the home can have all kinds of stuff pinned to it, some necessary, other just plain cool. It can be any app, or any point in an app where an app deems it available. For example, you can pin an Images app, but also a folder from the gallery of images, or a single image. Or, pin the Youtube app, or a video from Youtube. Or a contact. Or a group of contacts, call it "quickdial". Or Facebook contacts. In fact, most stuff can be pinned. Submenus, for example. Again, it's up to the app, so not everything is there. But just enough to be cool.

There are no themes. The phone has a dark or light theme, for serios-and-power-saving or iPhone-like-white. Then, all tiles, menus, subtext, etc is either in highlight color (black on white or white on black) or subtext color. That you can pick. So your phone is going to be blue-on-black, red-on-black, orange-on-white, but never green on mauve. Why this happens is because the tiles must look uniform. Though if you feel anti-microsoftish, you can unpin everything an pin smutty Youtube videos and naked pics. You bought it, it's yours.

The other "desktop", on the right, is a list of apps. It initially starts with a list, the moves to an indexed list (with letter headings) and finally all you do is letter-navigate because there are no groups or folders, they auto-group by name. In the end, searching is good, but tapping a letter header brings up an a-z as big as the screen, so it's ultimately easy to navigate.

It's a new concept, not the familiar, but this is a newly-designed interface. No familiar here, folks, MS is throwing in the glove, no copying of iPhone here (hear that, Android?).

And that's not the end of it. Microsoft does like its standards, and it's a good thing. Each service it supports has a list of capabilities. Google, for example, has mail, contacts, calendar. MS's own has mail, contacts, calendar, chat and remote photos. Picasa has remote photos. Facebook has photos, news, feeds, posts and chat. Huh. So here is how they solved it:

People hub. The thing you used to call "Contacts" is now a "people hub". This hub thing integrates all the contacts from everywhere (if you chose to) in a neat list. The list also has linked accounts, so you can link Facebook to Live contacts, to Google accounts, etc. It has a page look, with one being "all" contacts, with groups, the next is "recent", the next is "news" which integrates the latest news on any contacts - which is an altogether surreal experience. All news, posts, mails, statuses, everything that goes on in your little world pops in there. Like a news feed in Facebook, except this has twitter, mail, text, calls, your changes, everything. Or none at all, if you don't like social media.

Never has anything worked so effortlessly - it took me 2 days to realize I don't have a Facebook app - the news was fine, I can click on posts, like or comment, see photos and videos, everything.

It also allows you to hide contacts as to keep phonebook and - say- mail contacts separate, or ignore Facebook if you like. Which is f*ing NEAT.

The same concept applies to images. One application, with albums. In this album view, you have the camera roll (cam pics), the Images (stuff you used to call Images), the online albums of everyone (Picasa, facebook, etc) and the skydrive albums.

What's that? Well, the WP7 comes with a SkyDrive account. This is part of the Live.com account you will kind of need to make. It offers 25G of online storage of whatever-the-heck-you-want, with strict security and not-even-God pre-set security on everything. You can up and down images as you like, it's completely integrated. The camera also has the option to insta-share pictures as you take them, be it on Facebook, Picasa, or store to SkyDrive.

Plus, another 5G for mesh storage, that can't be shared, where you can connect with your PC and share files in a centralized fashion.

Skydrive takes it in like a Thai pro. Images, Videos, Music, Documents, all centralized (if you want). Yes, documents, it's a Microsoft phone, remember? Office, and plenty of it, with Word, Excel, the works. And none of that preview stuff, real, live, editing Office. And with Mesh Storage, you can start at work, add and sketch ideas on the bus (you'll be riding the bus after you shell for this baby) and finish at home.

Hubs, hubs everywhere.

Remember messages? And how those messages became Conversations? Well, now Conversations have now become threads. A thread is with a single person, and includes text, MMS, chat, the works. Once you start threading with one person, it keeps track of it and brings up history as you chat. Person moves from text to FaceBook chat? No worries, all you see is a little "facebook" in the thread and you keep on chatting. Move back to SMS? A little "text" line separates the lines as you keep typing. YOU want to switch targets? Tap the switch button, pick an avenue and keep typing. The window also sports an Attach button for pushing attachments and a "record" button for voice chats if your hands are tied up.

Mail is separate for now, with voices out there crying in MS's ear to include. The mail app has unified inbox, a myriad of accounts, but still it behaves like a mail app. You can pin inboxes to your start or the unified "mail" that brings everything in.

The thing I like about MS at thus point is that it doesn't hold a grudge if you have other accounts. It has 250+ partner sites, the best, and integrates them all. Try telling Google you want your live mail. See how that goes. Not these guys, they love you anyway. Facebook? Sure. Picasa? Google? Youtube? Let them come. It'll take them all, split and sort them, and make the pieces into hubs.

A little of Nokia remains. Nokia still has Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive, if you liked those, though Bing also chimes in as a backup complete with turn-by-turn navigation.

Videos are a little weird, because videos, video apps, podcasts and music all come together into the Zune hub. I personally don't like Zune, but hey, it's a hub and it works. Plays all kinds of stuff, HD included. Easy controls, fast play, fast skip through media, crystal clear picture. I'm trying hard to hate it, but I can't.

Internet is piped through IE9. Yes. The first browser that isn't webkit. So, how is it? Well, it's IE, so the sites look right (not a stab, I'm just sayin'). The Adreno GPU works its magic, the thing is FAST like the Roadrunner. Sports multi-finger zoom, real tabs (well, windows, actually), a user-selected user-agent, options to clear cookies, several basic options and is generally well adapted.

It's eyecandy, but it's fairly young. It's lacking hover support (it's in the works at MS - until then you can cheat your way through some sites), there are no "fast forward to top" buttons and Flash isn't here yet. 7.0 had Flash, 7.1 hasn't one but MS has announced that Adobe and MS are working together hard to push F10 or later on the device. At 1.4 GHz on an 800x480, shouldn't be too hard to make it work. Until then enjoy HTML5.

In fact it's so young WP7.0 didn't support landscape.

Games are supported via XNA framework, which means games flow like water. There's an XBOX icon that serves as a game hub, complete with what XBOX brings - achievements, avatars, saved games and progress, animations and other cool stuff.

Your won status and settings are integrated into a "me" tile that contains your own public data, like phone number or avatar if you like, but also eats Facebook notifications and allows for status updates and chat status (away/here/ appear offline/offline).

There are no profiles to speak of yet, you are basically into "works" "vibrates" and "shuts the hell up" mode. The global volume is just that, global. Want stuff turned down, fiddle with volume. Nice because you can have "quiet" gaming. Bad if you want to wake up tomorrow morning. (this is acknowledged as a bug and they are fixing it. In fact, it might be fixed, I updated my phone today).

One more thing, before I hit the character limit. The voice commands. Yes. Phone has a voice UI, which can be ON, ON on wired headset, ON on bluetooth headset, ON on bluetooth and wired and kinda-off.

Hold the Windows button and speak. Soaks up a lot of accent, like that guy in the video who I have nothing against but can't say Hungary in English.

You can say "call Jim", "call Jim on Mobile", "text Jim". Basic. Level 2, you have "start <application>. Level 3, you have true voice recognition that Bings your query. And for the truly elite and the complete *****s, it has an "understanding" of sorts, that fixes your queries to Bing so it makes sense. "Search for Pizza restaurants nearby" searches for Pizza restaurants nearby. So does "where can I get pizza". Also equivalent are "Italian restaurants" and "pasta places", depending on if you paid for the phone or just stolen it.

There's also a level 4 of sorts, or -1, depending on how unable to speak English you are. You can dictate your messages and chats. When on a BT or wired headset, phone can read the message to you. It goes like this:

WP: Message from Jim. Content: How are you, Jack? You can say "reply" or "cancel"
You: Reply.
WP: Say your message.
You: I'm not speaking to you, you overdressed pickle.
WP: (after you were quiet for about a second). "I'm not speaking to you, you overdressed pickle". You can say "send" or "try again"
You: "send"
WP: <soft beep>

It does this with a TV on in the room, or the sound of an engine. It's not tv-grade bull, but it is workable and damn neat. If your message is in English or another supported language. I have no idea what the supported language list is, frankly, I keep my phone in English anyway because some terms translate like hell. Also, there are more commands coming. The W7 (desktop) speech recognition supports English, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese. So, at most, those. Though I wonder, if it does German, how hard can it be to implement anything else? Heck, Romanian is phonetic, like Italian and Spanish. All you do is re-type the key words and add a dictionary.

Though, for an English-only command, it does well with contacts.

Also, at any point, you can hold the button and mutter "help". A help comes on, with a list of commands, read out loud for the blind, stupid, or people with wet hands. Yes, wet. See, the screen is flush with the case, the speaker is at the bottom, the face buttons are touch and the top is covered, so when you operate the phone with hooker bl... I mean wet hands, it's OK.

In fact, no matter what you have on your hands, just hold the Windows button and say it out loud. Neat stuff.

This concludes part one of the OS overview, part two coming up. General feel, the rest of the apps and new concepts and the DIRT.

[v 1.1, added voice]