Turns out it's not called Zune Phone:

http://gizmodo.com/5471805/windows-phone-7-series-everything-is-different-now?skyline=true&s=i

That + internet + Zunepass = win.

I want.

Sprint is gonna make it not available on SERO..I just know it.

Not holding my breath until I hear a lot more about application development. Rumor has it they're going the way of the iPhone with removing multitasking. That would be a killer.

Also, if they don't allow other browsers, that too would be a killer. Internet Explorer is bad enough on the PC.

With an estimated release at the end of this year, there's plenty of time for changes - I'm hoping they smarten up a bit. Then again, even IE is worlds better than the crappy browser on my Centro.

The project lead would never give a definitive yes or no when asked about mutlitasking, so that makes me a bit nervous. I don't think IE will be a huge issue, and I highly doubt MS will tie you into one browser since WinMo has always been about being able to use whatever you wanted.

The development is the one thing I'm fairly excited about, if they do it right. If it's based on WPF/SilverLight, it has the potential to be really awesome. Definitely better than any other mobile development platform out right now I think.

Yeah, but that's a Centro. Every smartphone nowadays runs on Webkit (Except maybe the n900, I think that's Firefox).

I guess it was too much to hope that Microsoft would adopt WebKit for mobile. At least it isn't IE6, like it is on the Zune HD. The Zune HD's browser is pretty bad.

Also: Darth, they might yet lock it down now. This is a whole new angle for them. Skinning (like HTC's Sense and such) are now impossible. Hardware requirements from developers are incredibly strict. It's not a stretch to assume they might force a specific browser as well, or at least keep it from integrating well (so that URLs always open IE for instance).

Never heard of it.

Yeah, I'm guessing they've made a new version of mobile IE that's at least based on IE8, if not 9 (they could possibly be developing it alongside 9).

It's based on code somewhere between IE7 and 8.

Maybe, but I don't think they're dumb enough to go full-on Apple style with it and start restricting what browsers you can run and such. That'd be shooting themselves in the foot. I think the lock down on specs and skinning is just to enforce some uniformity in the platform, which previous versions of Windows Mobile definitely did not have.

I have no issue with non-multitasking on the iPhone (as much as I talk bad about it), there isn't enough to do to really have to multitask, and the screen real estate is too small to actually do any efficient multitasking like you would on a PC. If I close the browser to say, view my contacts or take a picture, then go back to the browser, it opens up the same pages I was on, so it's like I never closed the browser, it's only 2 button clicks away so it's really not a big deal.

Before the iPhone I had a verizon i760 with windows mobile 6.1. I hated the fact it had multitasking because if you weren't paying attention, you could have like 20 apps running at one time.

Inability to run a music app in the background (Pandora, etc.) is the main killer. Almost everything else works fine.

Yeah that would be a pain

Be careful, pundits will see no mention of multitasking in a feature article and conclude, "OMG IT HAS NO MULTITASKING GET A PRE/ANDROID!! :downswords:"