More information about the upcoming Windows Phone 7 updates

Windows phone 7 is based on Silverlight 3 with a few elements from Silverlight 4. Last Thursday on December 2nd during a Silverlight firestarter conference, Microsoft’s Scott Gutherie, unveiled Silverlight 5 which brings a new host of features which the video above talks about. Surprisingly, nothing was mentioned about what improvements that would come to the phone which would now be two versions back. Maybe Microsoft has something up their sleeves because listen from minute mark 6:00 (runs only about 30 seconds) where when Dan Fernandez is asked that question, he hints that they may have some big announcement about Silverlight for WP7 during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February 2011. This is certainly good news because I hope they will bring the Silverlight versions closer to parity with the desktop counterpart. I hope that the same goes with the ie browser which I hope will gain the hardware acceleration, vastly improved JavaScript and HTML5 features found in ie9.

To add to the above, wpcentral has a story from Business insider which reports

The head of a company that develops mobile apps is expecting a significant update to Windows Phone 7 in February. Among the changes: easing restrictions for third-party developers, which could increase the number of "long-tail" apps available for the phone.

We are already expecting an update in January which is supposed to bring copy and paste together with phones on the Verizon and Sprint networks so I’m not sure how this February update relates to the former. The next 60 days should be very exciting.

source wpcentral, business insider, channel9