Two weeks ago, at an ironic Berlin showing of Quentin Tarantino's inexplicably spelt Inglourious Basterds, my iPhone dropped out of my pocket, never to be seen again. Since then, I've been using a Motorola smartphone powered by Windows Mobile, which has just reinforced my belief that Windows Mobile 7 just can't come fast enough: Windows Mobile 6 and its other variants just barely seem to recognize that they are supposed to be phones.
So when can we expect Windows Mobile 7? We all know its been delayed too long already, but according to a post over on Ars Technica, we may be seeing it within the next six or seven months.
The evidence comes by way of Microsoft programmer Hand Huang's LinkedIn resume, which boasts:
3. Joining Caesar product development, lead a team to do telephony feature and other applications development. Migrated relative applications from Windows Mobile 6 to Windows Mobile 7
Language: C++ Tools: VS2008, AKU, Platform Builder
Runtime Environment: Windows Mobile 7.0 (Beta)
According to Ars, that indicates that Windows Mobile 7 is already in internal beta testing, which jives with Microsoft's own search for internal testers in recent months. Ars postulates that more testers will be seeing Windows Mobile 7 by November of this year, while consumers will get their grubby little mitts on the operating system in April of 2010.
Speculation, to be sure, but Microsoft can't afford to delay much longer than that… if, indeed, they aren't already too late to be competitive in the future of smartphone operating systems.
