Microsoft announced today that Windows Phone 7 has reached the “technical preview” state and as a result it can now ship prototype units to developers. It states that “thousands of prototype phones from Asus, LG and Samsung are making their way into the hands of developers over the next few weeks”. Along with these devices for developers a number of media outlets and bloggers received units to review.
Reaction varied, particularly depending on how important one felt the missing elements such as cut-and-paste, third party application multi-tasking, side loading of applications, raw sockets, Microsoft SQL Server CE , HTML5 or Flash or Silverlight in the mobile browser and others were compared to new UI and cloud integration features that were present.
Microsoft oriented Paul Thurott has a very positive preview. Engaget, Gizmodo, ZDnet, Cnet all have indepth previews in whicih they note that the missing features could really hurt Windows Phone 7’s chances as could a lack of third-party apps at launch.
In light of this, Ed Bott’s statement that Microsoft really needs to publize a road-map for WP7 is a good one. Missing cut-and-paste is acceptable if it will be fixed in a few months, waiting for a fix sometime in the indefinite future will drive customers away.