Windows 7 comes to mobile phones: bringing minimalism, tiles and some hope for Microsoft

The succesful Windows 7 operating system for PCs has finally gone mobile and will be available in selected mobile phones by the end of this year.

Built to incorporate touch screen technology, Windows 7 was always going to be a big step up from their traditional series of smartphone operating systems, but Engadget describe it as radically different from its predecessors, Windows 6 and Windows 6.5 (launched October). Minimal and very functional design seem to be a distinguishing feature of the user interface. And the menus are based around tiles (as seen above) rather than lists.

The OS is linked into to social networking – the contacts list syncing with Facebook for example and has XBox integration.

The major advantage of having a Windows operating system on a phone is syncing it with your PC and being able to call up, read and edit documents and spreadsheets from Word and Excel etc. Looks like the intelligent user interface

Perhaps because of Microsoft’s brand value Windows is currently is the fourth biggest provider of mobile phone operating systems, behind Symbian, the iPhone, and Blackberries – but ahead of Google Android. The launch of Windows 7 mobile will only help the prominence of the OS – the Windows 7 PC version has had a good rep in geek circles and with the general public.

Unfortunately, phones with the device will not being going on sale for a while: 7-8 months. Bid your time PCgirls. It will come…