Earlier today, HP announced a big event on Feb 9th around WebOS, so expect a cool new line of Palm WebOS based phones by HP (and maybe an iPad like device as well) to be announced - and I expect much of it will leapfrog WinPhone7 in features.

On the topic of speech-to-text, the free Dragon Dictation app for the iPhone to do speech to text works great. It was announced today that's it's available for WP7... http://www.cellphonedigest.net/news/2011/01/nuance_dragon_dictation_new_lg.php

Below are some raw notes I made around the time WinPhone7 launched...

WP7 targets consumers only, not geeks, not business people
WP7 targets consumers who are active in social media
Most MS employees would not use WP7 as main phone if they did not work at MS

Develop with Silverlight or XNA
No copy/cut/paste
No screen capture ability
No customization of app icon layout/position
No multitasking/background apps
No tethering
No open ports (no Skype or remote desktop)
No hardware APIs (video out, music, adapters, etc.)
No enterprise marketplace
Trail editions (free or pay, dev controls limits/time)
No in-app upgrades
Adding major new features like GPS or camera support to an app requires creating new app (not an upgrade)

My own opinions about WP7...

.NET developers build business apps, not consumer apps
LightSwitch might make good data-centric WP7 app tool, if LightSwitch ends up adding WP7 support
Silverlight is a technology that will likely not be widely adopted beyond WP7 native apps
Most.NET developers are playing wait and see before developing WP7 apps
WP7 targets consumers only, mainly first time smartphone users who are also social media addicts

>Ken,
>
>Happy New Year.
>
>I agree re sales. Shame- WP7 is quite a nice UI and the prospect of consistency across apps will be refreshing for anybody who lives in the Android jungle.
>
>Part of the issue is that people aren't as easy to wow as they were when iPhone first came out. And the market now has expectations that prevent serious OS innovation such as form factor constrained by a user's pocket or purse and an overall UI experience that demands consistency across devices. MS was smart to offer Halo etc which definitely is a distinguishing feature, but obviously not enough to cause a groundswell. IMHO MS is going to need a *big* difference point like reliable speech-to-text or a really smart agent (not like that awful paperclip) to create enough zing to cause mass migration. JMHO.