-I'm Ina Fried with CNET here in New York for the launch of Windows Phone 7 where Steve Ballmer is about to show off Microsoft's answer to the iPhone and Android and all the other smartphones that it hopes to compete against.
-We think there's a lot of things that you'll see today that will help you understand how the Windows Phone is different, but I'd focus on two key themes--always delightful and wonderfully mine.
We'll have nine phones available when the Windows Phone ships here in the United States in November.
There's a range of phones here from LG, from Samsung, from HTC, and from Dell.
-All Windows Phones, in fact, have at least a full gigahertz processor and has several other great standard features under the hood and we're thrilled to be launching the Samsung Focus on November 8th and the HTC Surround and the LG Quantum just a few weeks later.
U-verse Mobile is an application we launched earlier this year to let our U-verse TV customers download and watch hit TV shows on their smartphones.
Starting next month, we'll bring this capability to Windows Phone 7 customers and if you don't have AT&T U-verse TV, we're gonna let you do that nationwide for any Windows phone for a low monthly fee.
-One of the key features for making the phone really wonderfully yours, really deeply personal, is being able to put the people that you care about right up there on your start experience in a live tile and these tiles are live because, as Steve updated his Facebook post, you can see if he posts pictures, I'll see them right there.
I don't have to go in and out of a whole lot of applications to see all these sorts of things.
It's aggregated for me right on the home screen.
Now, as Steve said, we want the phone experience to be always delightful, whether you're using our software, third party software, or no matter which phone you buy.
We're trying to make it easy for end users but also for developers.
The pictures hub has automatically customized with pictures of my twins.
You see my Xbox Live avatar.
These games were developed using XNA which is a development framework that works both on the Xbox and on the phone.
These phones are gonna be amazing game machines and with games developed that are happening on the Xbox platform as well, we think people will have a terrific experience.
-Well, there you have it.
It's mostly what we expected but a few things that one should pay attention to--one, copy and paste coming in early 2011.
Also, while the first models are gonna hit AT&T in November 8th, some of the models for both AT&T and T-Mobile will be somewhat later than that and then, also, all the AT&T phones are gonna be priced at $199 for those with a new contract.
For CNET, I'm Ina Fried.
