The Nokia Lumia 900 won the Best of CES award in the Smartphone category and it’s no surprise.  Before listing off the impressive specs, just look at this gorgeous piece of hardware.  Looks matter…trust me.  Windows Phone is already the most elegant mobile operating system.  Breathtaking industrial design is the other half of the equation.  When paired with iconic hardware, it’s like pairing your favorite Walla Walla Cabernet with your favorite steak.

I can’t count the number of reviews and comments stating that Windows Phone on the Lumia 900 has surpassed the iPhone.  If you follow the U.S. wireless market, then you know that things like 4G LTE network speeds, large screens, front-facing cameras, and dual-core processors are the current drivers of smartphone sales.  The Lumia 900 addresses three of those drivers with support for AT&T’s 4G LTE network, a 4.3-inch AMOLED ClearBlack display, and a front-facing camera for video calls.  It’s powered by a single 1.4 GHz processor and if you’ve paid attention to all the reviews in the press, you’ve heard that Windows Phone runs circles around its dual-core competitors.  Better software design, better engineering, more efficient algorithms, and optimized coding techniques means you can do more with less.  Last but not least, the Lumia 900 comes with an amazing 8MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics.

The HTC Titan II came to the CES party guns-blazing with a monster of a smartphone.  It tics all the required boxes needed for sales by delivering a massive 4.7 inch screen, support for AT&T’s 4G LTE network, and a front-facing camera.  The 1.5Ghz Snapdragon 2 processor gives this superphone all the horsepower it needs.

Joining the camera arms-race with the Lumia 900, the Titan II comes equipped with a whopping 16 megapixel camera that can capture 720p video.  If you’re looking for a giant phone that can go head-to-head with the Galaxy Nexus, this is your device.

2012 is already shaping up to be a great year with compelling hardware matched-up with Windows Phone 7.5, but what else does this platform need to make my prediction come true?  Oh yeah, apps.  Do you remember back in the 80′s when DOS-based PCs from IBM and Compaq gave Apple IIs and Macs more than they could handle?  It might not have been eye-catching, but DOS had more apps that allowed consumers and companies to be successful.  In the 90′s, Windows ran away with the computing market with the Mac, Linux, NeXT, and OS/2 unable to compete in the app department.  Why do you think this was the case?  I know a big reason was because Borland and Microsoft made better and easier-to-use development tools for Windows.

With 50,000+ apps in the Marketplace, Windows Phone is surging forward and now sits in third-place behind the iPhone App Store and the Android Market.  Aside from developers betting on the success of a platform, they need development tools, emulators, and programming languages that make it easy for them to be productive.  When I look at the velocity at which new apps are being added to the Windows Phone Marketplace, it tells me that Visual Studio is making a big difference.

In my job, I have to work with the development tools for all the major smartphone platforms and I can tell you without drinking any Kool-Aid that the competition isn’t even close.  Most iPhone developers I know find that learning Objective-C from the NeXT operating system to be a daunting task compared to modern, high-level languages like C# and VB.  While the world is full of Java developers, the complexity of cobbling the necessary tools together needed to build for Android apps is a real productivity killer.  Just running Eclipse on JDK 1.6 sucks the life and performance out of my fast Windows 7 laptop.  Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone is free and the emulator + SDKs all download and install together making the whole process fast and simple.  Apps get access to all phone sensors, a local database (SQL Server Compact), and Metro design.

Better productivity means faster time-to-market which means more apps for Windows Phone.

If you’re a web designer/developer, Internet Explorer 9 is alive and well on Windows Phone 7.5.  This means you’re no longer held hostage to the highly-fragmented WebKit mobile browser platform.  You get a hardware-accelerated, amazingly fast browser with support for more “fully-baked” HTML5 standards like Web Storage, Geolocation, Canvas, Audio and Video.

The lightning fast-Chakra JavaScript engine supports ECMAScript 5 which means your DOM interactions and Ajax web service calls will blur the lines with native apps.  When you retrieve data from the cloud or your on-premise servers via Ajax, you’ll now be able to persist it offline in Web Storage.  Support for CSS3 means things will be beautiful, 2D transforms will occur, and media queries will give you responsive design.

So here we stand with the best smartphone operating system, best hardware, best development tools and the best mobile web browser.  I’m certain that Windows Phone with its army of app developers, OEMs and Mobile Operator partners will be marching to victory this year.

Be fearless,

Rob

The reason users had to reenter their credentials each time is because there was no secure way to store those credentials or the key in Isolated Storage.  Having the unencrypted credentials used to create the key sitting next to the encrypted data is the same as having no security at all.  With the launch of Mango, all this has changed.

Windows Phone 7.5 gives us the Data Protection API (DPAPI) which makes it easy to encrypt and decrypt data.  It pulls this off by generating and storing a key based on the user and phone credentials.  Oh, and it gets its own decryption key, which is created the first time you run the app that’s doing the encrypting. 

Using the ProtectedData class, it’s as simple as calling the Protect method to turn an unencrypted byte array into an encrypted one.  On the flip side, you call the Unprotect method to convert an encrypted byte array into an unencrypted one.  In cases where the data stays on the phone, this may take care of all of your encryption needs and you won’t necessarily have to jump through all the AesManaged hoops I had you jump through back before we launched Windows Phone 7.  On the other hand, if you want to encrypt data on Windows Phone, send it over a network and decrypt it on a server or other endpoint, you need to stick with the stuff I taught you before.

Below is a snippet of code that shows you how to encrypt the password and salt values needed to create a key with the AesManaged class:

using System.Security.Cryptography;

//Convert Password and Salt values to byte[] arrays

byte[] PasswordByte = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(Password.Text);

byte[] SaltByte = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(Salt.Text);

//Encrypt Password and Salt byte[] arrays using Protect() method

byte[] ProtectedPasswordByte = ProtectedData.Protect(PasswordByte, null);

byte[] ProtectedSaltByte = ProtectedData.Protect(SaltByte, null);

//Save byte[] arrays as two files in Isolated Storage

…

//Read byte[] arrays from files

//Decrypt Password and Salt byte[] arrays using Unprotect() method

byte[] PasswordByte = ProtectedData.Unprotect(ProtectedPasswordByte, null);

byte[] SaltByte = ProtectedData.Unprotect(ProtectedSaltByte, null);

//Convert byte[] arrays to strings and display in the text boxes

Password.Text = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(PasswordByte, 0, PasswordByte.Length);

Salt.Text = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(SaltByte, 0, SaltByte.Length);

With this simple code above, you can now encrypt and decrypt your credentials so you can save them in Isolated Storage next to the portable, encrypted data created via the AesManaged class.  So what does this buy you?

It means your users can enter their credentials just once, no matter how many times they launch your secure application.  Hassle-free.

Stay safe out there,

Rob

This is an amazing milestone for the Windows Phone team and Microsoft.  With hundreds of new features including the world’s fastest mobile HTML5 web browser, Windows Phone “Mango” promises to make a huge impact in the mobile + wireless space this fall.  This “splash” is made even bigger around the world as we expand our Windows Phone language support to include Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Swedish.

Congratulations to the Windows Phone engineering team for building the best phone operating system in the world!

-Rob

Enjoy,
Rob

This would become the most compelling Mobile Enterprise Application Platform of the last decade.  In 2006 I created the Windows Mobile Line of Business Accelerator to help jumpstart the efforts of corporate developers + enterprise ISVs with advanced tools and technologies like the .NET Compact Framework, SQL Server Compact and Visual Studio.

It’s a new decade and we’ve created the most powerful Mobile Enterprise Application Platform ever with Windows Phone 7.  Next week at Tech Ed North America 2010, I will begin the process of jumpstarting your enterprise development efforts again with Silverlight, WCF, Azure and Visual Studio 2010.  Give yourself an edge and come check out my sessions:

Developing Occasionally Connected Applications for Windows Phone 7

The Silverlight development environment has proven itself to be a rich, capable, and adaptable runtime that has reached across platforms to support Windows, the Mac and the Web. Silverlight has now become the application platform for Windows Phone 7, which is great news for new and existing Silverlight developers looking to support this exciting new phone platform. To ensure the best experience for mobile users, apps built for Windows Phone 7 must implement an occasionally-connected pattern of development that Silverlight developers for the other platforms may find unfamiliar. In this session, learn how to build mobile apps that adjust their behavior based on changing network conditions. Also learn how to conquer unreliable wireless networks by implementing RESTful principles to ensure your messages are both compact and fast. Then take those WCF REST services and use them to retrieve database tables, rows, and columns in order to drive the behavior of your mobile applications. Finally, learn how to build an in-memory database that you can query with LINQ and save its data to Isolated Storage to ensure that your Windows Phone apps keep working regardless of network conditions.

Microsoft’s Next Generation Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP)

A Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) allows corporate IT departments to support multiple mobile applications on a single platform. Gartner states that this market currently tops $1 billion and forecasts that 95% of the world’s organizations will standardize on a single MEAP offering by 2012. Companies looking for a better ROI are moving to reusable platforms instead of building tactical, ad-hoc mobile solutions that support only a single app. Attendees of this session will learn how to save money by steering away from point solutions and on to Microsoft’s MEAP stack. Come see what Microsoft’s Next-Gen Mobile Enterprise Application Platform looks like and learn how it will support a broader range of mobile platforms and operating systems including Windows Phone 7 and Azure.

See you in New Orleans!

- Rob

The People Hub is communication central, where customers can see all relevant content associated with a contact, including live feeds from social networks and photos. It also provides a single place from which customers can post updates to Facebook and Windows Live in one step.

The Pictures Hub brings together photos from the phone, the PC and online albums into one simple view. It’s easy to share pictures on the phone to social sites such as Facebook and Windows Live, and see up-to-date online albums that others are sharing.

The Office Hub provides fast access to Microsoft Office Mobile, Microsoft Office SharePoint and Microsoft Office OneNote on the same phone that offers Microsoft Office Outlook e-mail.

The Games Hub delivers the first and only official Xbox LIVE experience on a phone. It’s not just about games on the phone; it’s about playing games with friends.

The Music + Video Hub is the one place for media — from music to streaming radio to podcasts to video.

It’s all good!
-Rob

While you probably knew that My Phone backs up your photos, contacts, text messages, music, documents and IE favorites to the cloud, you might not have known that My Phone can be used to locate and secure a lost phone.  You can ring, lock, erase, and locate your lost phone on a map.  On the CBS Early Show, Natali was able to display a message on her lost Windows phone instructing whoever found it to contact her and return it.  Pretty cool stuff and a great example of Microsoft tying the cloud to the third screen.

Best Regards,

Rob

One Phone for Work and Play

With a Windows phone, people can rely on their phone to balance their lives, from work to home to play. Whether it’s editing a document or sharing several vacation updates through a social networking application, Windows phones help people stay connected to the people and information they care about most. Because people’s phones often match their personality and unique needs, Microsoft now offers the Windows phone Custom Theme Creator. People can create personalized themes for their Windows phone by choosing the color and design that suits their style at http://www.windowsphone.com/theme.

With a Windows phone, people will have familiar work and play experiences right from their Start button, including these:

• A new enhanced Windows Live experience with What’s New feeds and improved Windows Live photo sharing across major social networking sites (such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and Flickr)

• A best-in-class e-mail experience and the ability to manage multiple accounts right from their phone with Outlook Mobile and Exchange Server synchronization not to mention Hotmail

• The ability to use PowerPoint and open and edit Word and Excel documents from their phone with Microsoft Office Mobile

• The power to sync files on the phone through Windows Live Media Manager and play media files seamlessly with Windows Media Player

• A redesigned Windows Internet Explorer mobile browser with Adobe Flash Lite that brings the mobile Web browsing experience closer to what people have come to expect from their PC

Powerful Mobile Services

With the launch of these new Windows phones, Microsoft debuts new services that bring added value to people.

My Phone is a free service that helps people manage and back up the invaluable information stored on their phone and provides peace of mind and an easy restore option in the event of a lost or damaged phone. My Phone automatically synchronizes the specific types of a phone’s content the user chooses — from contacts and appointments to texts, photos and more — to a password-protected Web site. People can also publish their photos from the My Phone Web site or their phone directly to Windows Live, Facebook, MySpace and Flickr. As part of the free service, people can go online and map the last known location of their phone from when it was last synchronized. In addition, a set of more advanced “lost phone” features are being offered as a premium package that people can activate as needed. The My Phone Premium package includes the ability to immediately locate the phone’s current location on a map (in the U.S. only); remotely lock a phone and post an “if found” message to its screen; loudly ring the phone even if it is set to vibrate or silent mode; and ultimately, if needed, completely erase the phone to protect personal data from falling into the wrong hands. People using My Phone on their phone running either Windows Mobile 6.0, 6.1 or 6.5 can access the premium package free of charge until Nov. 30, 2009. After that date, seven-day access to the premium package will be available for purchase for $4.99 in the U.S.

Also launching today is Windows Marketplace for Mobile, which offers people an easy way to find and purchase high-quality mobile applications for both work and play, while creating a new opportunity for developers to reach millions of people using Windows phones worldwide. Microsoft is pleased today to introduce 246 quality mobile applications initially in Windows Marketplace for work and play, with more than 753 ISVs worldwide on board to continue building out the catalog. People will have access to not only important line-of-business applications for work, but also popular mobile applications for play such as Facebook, MySpace, Netflix, Twikini, WunderRadio and ZAGAT, as well as leading game titles including Sudoku, “Guitar Hero World Tour” and the “PAC-MAN” series, all of which can be easily purchased and installed directly on a Windows phone. All purchased applications are certified by Microsoft to run on Windows phones and are backed by a simple return policy. Over the next few months, Microsoft will continue to evolve Windows Marketplace for Mobile to bring to market a fresh take on the app store that delivers strong value for developers and a great shopping experience for people.

Choice and Availability: A Phone for Everyone

Windows phones give people the power to choose the phone that best fits their style and budget by offering phones with a full physical QWERTY keyboard, others with just a large touch screen, and some with both touch screen and keyboard.

So what’s new for Developers?

Web developers can now target Internet Explorer Mobile for their applications.  Not only does this browser provide full desktop fidelity, but it also includes the fast IE8 Javascript engine to speed up code execution, DOM manipulation and Ajax calls.  Don’t take my word for it, test it out over at http://asp.net and watch it accurately render all the Ajax controls.

Both Native and Managed code developers get to take advantage of the new Gesture API to add panning and flicking to their apps.  The built-in physics engine allows developers to add smooth, finger-friendly scrolling.

For developers that are more at home with Cascading Style Sheets, HTML, Javascript and Ajax, Windows Mobile 6.5 introduces Widgets as an alternative to C++ or .NET.  These programs take advantage of the new Internet Explorer Mobile to render Rich Internet Applications that run outside the browser but take advantage of the power of the Web.

Any changes under the Hood?

Yes, since the launch of Windows Mobile 6, we’ve been progressively enhancing the Windows CE 5 kernel that powers the Windows Mobile platform.  You should expect better application stability, much more virtual memory available to running apps, and faster execution.

Have fun with your new phones!

- Rob