Microsoft's Frank Prengel on Windows Mobile

"Ever since Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7 at the Mobile World Congress, loads of - sometimes contradictory - information has been pouring out of Microsoft's. Given our traditionally good relationship with Microsoft Germany, I have managed to grab a hold of Microsoft Germany's Mobile Technical Evangelist #1. As usual, he was extremely talkative and had a lot to say on Microsoft's future roadmap..."

This is a Q&A with Frank Prengel, Technical Evangelist for Windows Phone & Windows Embedded at Microsoft Germany. There's not much that's new here, other than some details about exactly why Windows Phone 7 is such a big change from what we have now with Windows Mobile 6.5 - usability, performance, and stability were the most important aspects of the design. Note that "features" isn't in that list. Geeky types - and I'm one of them - like to think that features are what sell phones, but the reality is that all the features in the world won't matter if the phone is unusable, performs poorly, and is unstable. And, sadly, those three things characterize most Windows Mobile 6.5 phones.

My HTC HD2 is the best Windows Phone I've ever used, but I have daily frustrations with random slowdowns on it, unresponsive keys on the virtual keyboard, and overall slugishness. Here's the good news: when you start with a foundation of usability, performance, and stability, features can be added. The key, of course, will be how fast and how fully Microsoft can grow the feature list, the developer community, and the overall ecosystem for these phones. That's their challenge.