14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has touted a great deal of features for its upcoming mobile operating system, Windows Phone 7, including the platform's capability to keep its users entertained, and a series of new details on the matter have emerged recently. It seems that the upcoming solution would include multiple audio and video codecs, meaning support for a wide variety of file types, even if that won't be enough to turn handsets into true multimedia powerhouses.
According to a recent post on Midnight Programmer, in the audio area, Windows Phone 7 would come with support for WAV, MP3, WMA Lossless, WMA Pro, WMA Standard v9, AAC-LC, HE-AAC v1, HE-AAC v2, Adaptive Multi-Rate Narrow Band, Adaptive Multi-Rate ide Band, and Qcelp file types. As for video files, it would support WMV (simple profile, main profile and advanced profile), WMV v9, MPEG-4 Part 2 (simple profile, advanced simple profile), MPEG-4 Part 10, H.263 and DivX (4.x, 5.x and 6.x).
Of course, there are a series of other aspects here that would have to be explained or detailed. Even if Windows Phone 7 would land with support for that wide range of multimedia formats, that does not imply that users would be able to enjoy full benefits from this capability. Microsoft said previously that the platform won't include support for multitasking, and having a song playing in the background while surfing the Internet or answering an email might prove challenging. Except for the case in which all the running applications are default solutions, designed and implemented by Microsoft itself.
Moreover, Brandon Watson, Microsoft’s Director of Development Experience, seems to disagree on this. “Our phone platform allows users to multitask while also optimizing for phone performance. This is why the user mode is restricted to one process at a time. There are mobile platforms that allow anything to run in the background, but they are also dealing with mounting customer dissatisfaction with phone performance – our intent is enable customers to engage is multiple tasks simultaneously on the phone, while avoiding the dissatisfaction pitfalls the come when you compromise performance,” he said on the matter, a recent article on mobilitydigest shows.