Windows Phone 7 review: email, calendar and Microsoft Office first look

News
By Sandra Vogel
published

Microsoft may be aiming Windows Phone 7 at consumers, but there are plenty of features that will appeal to the business user. Sandra Vogel takes a sneak peek at the email, calendar and Office apps included with Microsoft's latest smartphone operating system.

Image 1 of 5
The Start screen on Windows Phone 7
The Start screen on Windows Phone 7

The Start screen on Windows Phone 7

Windows Phone 7 is about to hit retail and there has been a lot of talk about its potential as a consumer-focussed operating system with relatively little mention of its viability for business users. The whole look and feel of Windows Phone 7 is very different both from earlier Microsoft smartphone operating systems and from any other smartphone operating system.

There will be plenty of business users wondering how well Windows Phone 7 will work for them. Here, we take an overview of Microsoft's new operating system from a business point of view, pending a more detailed examination once we've got our hands on some hardware and given it a thorough testing.

We'll start by making one important point about Windows Phone 7. It is not backwards compatible with earlier versions. If your company currently use phones that run Window Mobile 6.5 or earlier, and you have a number of third party applications that you use regularly, upgrading to Windows Phone 7 models will prove tricky.

Sandra Vogel
Sandra Vogel
Freelance journalist

Sandra Vogel is a freelance journalist with decades of experience in long-form and explainer content, research papers, case studies, white papers, blogs, books, and hardware reviews. She has contributed to ZDNet, national newspapers and many of the best known technology web sites.

At ITPro, Sandra has contributed articles on artificial intelligence (AI), measures that can be taken to cope with inflation, the telecoms industry, risk management, and C-suite strategies. In the past, Sandra also contributed handset reviews for ITPro and has written for the brand for more than 13 years in total.