The Continued Evolution Of Windows Phone 7The Continued Evolution Of Windows Phone 7

Even though consumers are supposed to be able to buy a Windows Phone 7 device by the end of this year, Microsoft is still tweaking the user interface. Some of the changes are subtle and others are more noticeable.Earlier this month we saw pictures of the icons on the application bar - that bar at the bottom of the screen for most apps - that now have descriptive text below them. You no longer have to guess what the icon does.

For more major changes to the UI, check out Paul Thurrott's site. He was at Microsoft recently and got some comparative pics showing the difference between the February 2010 build that was shown at Mobile World Congress and the current build. The live tiles on the home screen have shed some of the stick-figure style icons in favor of more detailed icons. For example, instead of a plain envelope for email, there is now an Outlook icon reminiscent of what you'd see on a desktop. Oddly enough, the phone icon is the same one that represents the best handset AT&T had to offer to consumers in 1975.

He also noted that the tiles have a "squishing" effect when you touch them rather than just being hard plastic tiles. The hubs, or places that group your music, video, apps, people and other areas together have also been tweaked.

I would expect WP7 to go gold soon so carriers and manufacturers can make sure existing hardware and network plans work correctly with the platform. While I can appreciate the desire to make the OS more visually appealing, this seems largely like window dressing, pardon the pun. I would have rather they invested the time between February and now working on critical functions, like copy and paste or some measure of multitasking for third party apps.