14 DAY TRIAL // Windows Phone 7 loves the Cloud. There’s no other way of saying it. And Microsoft made it this way for a reason. The company has been sharing its three screens and a Cloud vision with the public for a while now, and with the advent of Windows Phone 7, a key piece of the puzzle is now in place.
And of course, the software giant has made sure that Windows Phone 7 is tailored to its Cloud ahead of anything else.
“Windows Phone 7 is the first device designed from the ground up with Windows Live in mind,” revealed Chris Jones, Vice President, Windows Live engineering.
“Right from the start, you can enter your Windows Live ID on your phone, and it will connect over the air to Hotmail, Messenger, SkyDrive, and the rest of Windows Live.”
Windows Phone 7 is capable of enabling users to synchronize not only their email, but also their calendar and contacts list with Windows Live Hotmail Wave 4.
This is done through the Exchange ActiveSync protocol, allowing users to intimately connect their Windows Phone 7 devices with Hotmail.
“And because the phone supports multiple ActiveSync connections, you can connect to your Exchange server at work and view all of your mail, both calendars, and your entire contact list on your phone,” Jones added.
“And similar to Hotmail on the web, it’s really easy to make quick edits to Office documents you receive as email attachments and reply.”
At the same time, there’s more to stretching Windows Phone 7 into the Cloud than just Hotmail. SkyDrive comes to complement Hotmail, allowing customers with WP7 devices to easily access and upload photos to SkyDrive.
“Any album you have shared on SkyDrive or using photo mail in Hotmail is available right on your phone, and you can comment on photos right from your phone. You can also see a feed of recent photos shared with you,” Jones explained.
“Once you take a picture on your phone, you can upload the photo to SkyDrive in one click, or you can choose to automatically upload photos as you take them.”
And on top of this, synchronization with the Cloud has been taken further yet. Notes in Office 2010 OneNote can sync between Office 2010, the Windows Phone 7 devices SkyDrive.
This will allow users to access their notes virtually from anywhere, as easily as possible.
“If you don’t feel like typing, you can even snap pictures or record audio clips using your Windows Phone and add them to a notebook,” Jones said.
But don’t think for a minute that Windows Phone 7 is limited to stretching into Windows Live and nothing more.
Fact is that just as the rich clients packaged into the Windows Live Essentials 2011 suite, WP7 also have an important social component.
“In addition to your contact list, Windows Live brings feeds and social updates right to your phone, so you can see a feed of activity from your favorite people across Messenger and your connected networks including Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace,” Jones stated.
The integration between Windows Phone 7 and Windows Live also brings additional benefits to users.
First off, mail, calendar, contacts, and extra content will be synchronized seamlessly with new devices that users configure with their Windows Live ID.
And “if you lose your Windows Phone, you can track it down right from Windows Live. Simply go to http://windowsphone.live.com and you can locate your phone on a map, ring your phone (even if it’s on silent or vibrate), or lock or erase a phone that has been lost,” Jones added.
