New phone operating system from microsoft for widows phone7 series

Microsoft on Thursday confirmed that its new phone operating system is as different under the hood as it is to the eye.

In a blog post and at an event with a handful of journalists, the software maker said that those developing software for Windows Phone 7 Series devices will do so using either Silverlight or XNA, the toolset used to create Xbox games.

The all-new look for Windows Phone 7 series isn't the only thing that's new. Developers will also use new tools--Silverlight and XNA--to write apps that work on the devices.

(Credit: Microsoft)

"Overnight those developers have become Windows Phone developers," said Charlie Kindel, the Microsoft executive in charge of the mobile developer strategy. "One of our principles is to build on the shoulders of giants."

Microsoft announced its plans for the new phones and showed off the user interface at last month's Mobile World Congress. However, it had been mum on what it would take to write software for the phones although speculation had centered on Silverlight and XNA.

While the move brings the phone closer to Microsoft's Web and gaming efforts, it also marks a pretty distinct break with past versions of Windows Mobile.

"In some cases, some work can be done to get those apps to run, but it's fundamentally a different platform," said Todd Brix, another member of the Windows Phone team.

The company also confirmed that it has no current plans to allow any current Windows Mobile phones to run the new OS, which is due to start shipping on new devices by this year's holiday season.

That the new OS is such a complete break with past versions is a relatively new development in the multi-year history of its development. Roughly 18 months ago, a largely new team of engineers and executives came in as part of what one employee termed "a complete reset" of the project.

What resulted was a product that resembles the Zune HD far more than any past version of Windows Mobile. Also gone was the notion of allowing both hardware makers and carriers a great deal of flexibility in customizing the phone.

In part by design and in part a nod to its weakening market position, recent Windows Mobile devices often hid the look of the operating system under a "skin" designed by the phone maker. With the new OS, Microsoft will insist its interface be preserved.

Microsoft is also far stricter on what hardware will go in the phones, mandating not just the screen size and type but also what buttons can be included and insisting the phone have things like an FM radio and Wi-Fi. Hardware makers will have some choice but mainly around external things such as whether the phone includes a physical keyboard or not.

One of the reasons for limiting choice, Kindel said, is to ensure that developers that write software for Windows Phones can do so without having to do separate testing for each phone on the market.

Kindel said that developers had grown frustrated with the experience of writing software for phones using Microsoft's OS. "To ship my app, I have to test on 35 devices or I will get nothing but support calls," Kindel said was the message he heard from developers.

Microsoft didn't offer the full details on what developers will have to do to write for Windows Phone Series 7 devices, but has said those details will come at the Mix 10 trade show in Las Vegas later this month. There it will offer details on the programming tools as well as the app store that will be part of the phone.

mobile battery of nuclear materials

A recent University of Missuri has developed a battery of nuclear materials for mobile. They are specially designed to provide lasting energy source. And some people think it could replace current batteries, including those used by electric cars. According to the creator, nuclear batteries have a very large capacity to generate electricity when compared with ordinary people.

The batteries have always been the Achilles’ heel of the mobile devices. Usually, the designers of electronic devices for mass consumption (like laptops or media players) use small displays or screens that are not very bright in order to save the scarce energy resources that are provided from the regular batteries. But the new nuclear battery would bring a solution based on a liquid semiconductor (rather than a solid semiconductor) that will produce a much longer lifetime for the battery. The reason is the solid semiconductors are attacked constantly by some radioactive elements used by other types of batteries, while the liquid semiconductor is quite resistant to these attacks. Although the term “nuclear” can be a little perturbing, the fact is that these batteries are not very different from those batteries used in, for example, medical pacemakers.

The new radioisotope battery has the size of a penny and provides much more power than the traditional ones because, according to the researches, its capacity is very superior. Jae Kwon, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Missouri, said that the radioisotope battery “can provide power density that is six orders of magnitude higher than chemical batteries”. That is to say, it provides no less than a million times more charge than any “normal” battery.

Kwon and his research team have spent enough time working to solve many problems that they have encountered when developing this type of battery. One important thing is the batteries need to be small and thin in order to be practical and useful; this way, they could be used to power watches and small electronic devices. As mentioned before, the prototype (which you can see in the picture below) has the size and thickness of a penny, but the researchers think they can achieve a thinner battery. In order to do this, Kwon has required the collaboration of another professor: J. David Robertson (chemistry professor and associate director of the MU Research Reactor). Together, they hope to maximize the power of the nuclear batteries as well as reduce the size and test other materials to make additional improvements. Kwon thinks that the final battery, which would be used in commercial gadgets, could be thinner than a human hair. For the moment, the research team have required a provisional patent in order to protect the exclusive right to use this invention.