If there is one thing that we now know from the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference it is that most of the folks in MS share the excitement and enthusiasm that Steve Ballmer has regarding Windows Phone 7, and that a wide range of other upcoming Microsoft services are going to make the whole deal a lot sweeter for all end users. When Ballmer stated that they would have plenty to be proud of, he was not kidding.

The Windows Phone 7 already brings a lot to the table. From the new Bing search engine (which is slowly proving to be quite the competition for Google’s search engine) to the inclusion of Zune, WP7 promises plenty of new features that are dedicated to making everything more accessible to users. The new OS will also have the Xbox Live Games services, the MSN player, Silverlight, the XNA engine and plenty of other unannounced features.

Microsoft is not just stopping with the OS, they also have several supporting services that will be launched such as the Windows Phone Live service which allows users to easily back up files online for free (which is a much better deal than the Apple MobileMe paid service).

The Beta versions of the development tools for Windows Phone 7 have also been launched as well as trial versions of the handset running the new MS OS have been given out to specific groups for testing.

Microsoft stated that the app support for the new OS has been overwhelming and that they are excited about the platform’s launch. Considering that Microsoft has been pretty generous to app developers –to a point of even offering cash incentives for some, it is pretty much important that WP7 still manages to come out with plenty of great app support.

With the new OS expected to come out this coming September, many smart phone hopefuls are keeping a tight control on their budget for the release of the first Windows Phone 7 handsets.

Taiwan based phone manufacturer HTC is one of the most celebrated smart phone makers of today. The company has just announced a massive growth in profits (gaining a full 33% increase from their 2009 performance) and is currently busy working on a large portfolio of handsets (some of which have been released in a roadmap leak).

HTC has had a very long history with Microsoft. While the company may be known famously for the Android OS (they played a key role as a partner for Google – developing the Nexus One as well as prominent Android smartphones like the HTC Desire and the HTC Wildfire), they also go pretty way back with the giant of Silicon Valley. Microsoft and HTC started their ties back when HTC was still a small electronics manufacturer. Tasked with building the most innovative and groundbreaking pocket PCs, HTC stood at the threshold of the business industry –only to be pushed back by the emergence of smart phones.

Anyway, HTC’s Windows Mobile handsets are not only the most well made, but they are also the most sought after. The combination of the Windows Mobile OS with the Sense user interface is one of the best combinations for the struggling platform –struggling in the general market at least.

The reason for this is the HTC Sense UI –which makes using Windows Mobile so much easier. Now, HTC is confirmed to be working on a WP7 device as well. While it has yet to be revealed if the HTC Mondrian and Mozart handsets are actually real, HTC has already confirmed that they will not be adding in a new user interface to the WP7 OS. No HTC Sense UI, a proprietary OS that the phone maker loves to add to their devices.

The HTC Sense may not be used, but even HTC has acknowledged the impressive user interface that Windows Phone 7 uses. The customizable tiles, the interconnected features and iTunes apps are among the best elements about the new OS.

If you want to get a good pulse on the real direction of technology trends, nothing beats getting the information straight from the source. Matt Brittin is the head of Google UK, and as one of the head honchos for what is probably the next Microsoft of the tech industry, their worldview on technology is going to be indicative of what lies next for our society.

According to Matt, the industry is now going to focus more on fixing up the networks and getting more people into mobile.

Several years ago, going online meant having to wait for minutes to get a tone on a dial up modem and trudge through the internet at a measly 4 kbps (despite the connection being good enough for 32kbps). With the introduction of broadband, connections began to grow in speed and coverage in an exponential manner. Within the span of decade, innovators are now looking into the possibility of sending entire Gigs worth of data in a moment’s time.

This made the internet more accessible to people. And thanks to the standardization of desktop and laptop computers, more and more people have learned to go online.

But the real growth starts with mobile. Right now, only a handful of Brits access the web through a smart phone –but as 3G and WiFi networks expand and grow, and smart phones become the more standardized device (eventually phasing out the lowly 2G handset), more people will be able to have access to the internet.

The numbers are already shifting. With each year, less and less people rely on desktop devices to access the web. At the same time, more people are starting to use smart phones.

But that is as far as Matt wants to predict, according to the Google Head, predicting trends over a year is more than just difficult, but close to impossible. He says that “you are going to be dramatically wrong”. And considering how fast the industry is moving, we can see the wisdom of his words.

It seems that it is still a tad bit too early to predict what Google has in store for its latest Android project. Android 3.0, dubbed Gingerbread, is quite the rumor magnet at the moment.

A few of these speculations come from trusted sources around the web. One such convincing theories came from Eldar Murtazin of Mobile Review. He said that the little green robot was to have steep spec requirements and was only meant to be used on high end mobile devices.

The major points brought up in the ‘Droid theories involve needing a beefed up mobile phone meeting a minimum screen size requirement as well as a specific resolution. This means that most of the current generation Google smart phones would be left in the dust once this new platform gets released.

To dispel the rumors, Google’s own Dan Morrillhas had to step in and deliver word via Twitter:

“I love it when people just make stuff up and report it as news. In summary, please remember that rumors are not official announcements. .”

While this may mean that no such spec requirements would be implemented, it is also possible that Google is just trying to do some damage control so as not to dissuade people from Android shopping. The statement came in just in time too, considering the fact that some HTC and Samsung mobile devices (notably the HTC Desire and Samsung Galaxy S) are still lagging behind in terms of their upgrade to Android 2.2.

Dan Morrillhas is the lead of Google Android’s Open Source and Compatibility Technology section, which makes him quite an authority on the subject. Also, Gingerbread still has a ways to go since it is still early in its development period.

At the very least, this will help prevent people from holding off buying a perfectly good current gen ‘Droid handset.

If there is one thing that has been the constant bane of all tech fans –it is the delays. With new updates, patches, products, releases and all things happening, it is already hard to keep track of what is new and what is not –having a company delay their update certainly makes things a lot harder to keep up with.

Take this case for instance. It was already stated that the Nexus One Froyo update was coming out last week and the HTC Desire would be getting updated this week. All well and good, but it seems that Google has decided to put in some strategic delays to the launch. Sure, we are getting a great final build of the Android 2.2 Froyo, but the OS has been sitting in Google’s developer shelves for quite some time now.

Even Adobe was pretty fast with the launch of the Flash Player for the Android 2.2 –the software came out days ahead of the Nexus One 2.2 update launch.

This leaves us with the HTC Desire, an impressive smart phone that some would even say rivals the Google Nexus One in terms of both specs and features. Not surprisingly too, HTC manufactured both devices, and HTC is considered to be playing a key role in the development of the Android OS.

The Desire’s main tech specs will certainly sound familiar to the owners of the Android Nexus One –the 5 mega pixel camera, a 3.7 inch AMOLED touch screen display, a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU; these pretty much reads out like the Nexus’ own specs and the reason for this is that HTC made the two devices one after the other. Actually, it was the Desire (then known as the HTC Bravo) that was designed first.

With the launch date of the HTC Desire’s Android update pushed, this means that other smart phones will have to wait longer too.

If you ask Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt about what the world would be like in the future, and he will tell you that it will have plenty to do with smart phone technology.

Sure, desktop computers will be around forever. The same can also be said about the newly emerging tablet devices as well. But smart phones are not becoming the new must have device –not because of all the convenience it delivers, but because the features it provides are a necessity in a world where people expect everyone else to be connected to the online world.

Back then, being online meant connecting to a slow dial up modem. These days, almost every cool gadget will have a WiFi feature that allows users to hook up to the internet. “Being awake meant being online” as Schmidt says, and he is quite right. These days, thanks to the power of smart phone technology, people are generally online all of the time.

That one single factor alone helps explain why the social networking site Facebook managed to become so successful while the site itself had the potential to match the previous success of MySpace, the fact that Facebook grew alongside the boom of smart phone usage helped bring the usage of the site higher.

The innovation does not stop there. Google is pushing to implement new standards and new features that would help make everything a lot more convenient. The current features of Google reflect this aim. The Goggles augmented reality feature, Google Maps, Street View and other features all focus on one basic thing –making relevant information accessible.

For a company built on the success of a search engine, this approach and goal is both strong and inspiring. With people like Schmidt at the helm of Google, we can only expect to hear more great things from the famous company in the coming years.

The HTC Wildfire is finally available from mobile network operator Vodafone UK. According to the most recent announcements, the device is available for free on several contract offers by the network operator.

Our recommended pick would be the 20 Pound monthly tariff for two years which gives the user unlimited text messages, 300 minutes of talk time and about 500 MB of data allowance each month. The offer takes full advantage of the device’s social networking capabilities, which is much recommended for anyone who wants to have the full value of owning this impressive Android handset.

In terms of specs, it is hard not to be impressed with what the HTC Wildfire has to offer. First off, the device comes with a nice big 3.2 inch TFT capacitive touch screen. A typical display for a mid range handset, it handles video playback and web browsing quite easily. The screen will support multi touch gestures, has an accelerometer, a proximity sensor that will automatically shut off the screen when used for a voice call and the HTC Sense user interface. Aside from the touch screen, there is an optical trackpad on the bottom of the device as well as support for movement gestures which will allow users to instantly switch the device to mute or to “dim out” an incoming call.

With the Qualcomm MSM7225 528MHz CPU, apps run fairly fast on this Android OS. Just do not expect to get super smooth performance when running resource intensive games. But for most phone functions, the CPU is able to provide a stable and fast experience.

The Wildfire’s main features focus heavily on social networking. It has several integrated apps that would allow users to easily access accounts on Facebook and Twitter as well as file hosting sites such as Flicker and YouTube for uploading media content to be shared.

Smart phones are designed to do many things. From expected features such as allowing users to make and receive calls and messages to having memory storage space for contact information and for the inbox of messages. With the arrival of better hardware, mobile phones begun to do more. From being able to connect to email servers to playing media content, the average mobile phone today has plenty of basic capabilities.

The arrival of smart phone technology, and more importantly, the new, complex mobile platforms that have been introduced, the capabilities of the smart phone has exponentially increased in the past few years.

While manufacturers and phone developers have been able to do plenty of things for the technology and the community, there are still plenty of functions that the average smart phone can provide. Thanks to the high power processors, large capacity batteries, massive touch screens and other hardware available, a standard smart phone of today is pretty much a very small, low power computer.

However, making use of this hardware is not something that phone makers can focus on. It is up to independent developers and companies to create specialized software for phones –and that is why we have apps.

But why apps are so famous and widespread is a different matter.

Sure, a mobile phone can do plenty of things, but Google and HTC has better things to do than program a augmented reality golfing guide –and that is where the apps come in for the end users. By allowing developers to create and distribute apps for different smart phones, users are able to access a wide variety of content and install specifically what they need.

From simple RSS readers to fun interactive games to very complex information databases, apps can store and provide a vast variety of data and functions. While there are a wide range of apps available for most platforms, they certainly shouldn’t be ignored when it comes to purchasing a new phone. Whether or not it has that must-have-app may prove the deciding factor between, say, that new Samsung Wave 2, or the Apple iPhone 4.

A bug has affected mobile phones using the Android operating system and it has become a security risk. If you have an Android smart phone, it would be in your best interest not to send any private or classified business SMS or MMS to your contacts.

The issue affects users by switching their contacts whenever a conversation reply is made. For example, if you were in a conversation with your friend John and an incoming message from your friend Pat arrives at your inbox, the message you were typing to John will now be addressed to Pat. On the other hand, if you switch over to Pat, the message can end up addressed to John. The Android software seems to “get confused” and switches your contacts even if you have not specified it to do so.

The clincher is that the switch does not always happen immediately when you receive a new message. Sometimes you do not even realize that you are sending the message to the wrong contact until it is already on its way. Even if the contact specified on your device is correct, there is still a chance that the message will get sent to a completely different person.

This erratic behavior seems to affects mobile phones with two or more running SMS or MMS conversations. And it is not confined to any set or model of Android smart phone either. Google Nexus One users get affected as much as HTC Incredible owners.

Google does not seem to have a clue as to what is really happening. A number of users have been posting on the Google support forums and no one has been able to reproduce the phenomenon reliably. For now at least, it would be safer to delete your conversations one you are done with them and it would be best to avoid sending anything you would not send to your lesser known contacts.

Age of Heroes Online is a simple, turn based strategy game that is played on the internet with just the web browser. It uses Java script and places players in a world that is populated by medieval fantasy monsters and creatures. The point of the game is to create one’s own hero and amass an army to fight enemies. It is simple, fun and strangely addictive, and now, it is coming to the Android smart phone.

It is actually no surprise that Age of Heroes Online finally got ported to a smart phone, after all, the game’s basic graphics require little resources to run and the gameplay itself is easily accomplished with a single cursor –no need for a keyboard or anything else.

The gameplay itself is easy enough to grasp, player move on a turn based system across a hex tile board and positing their armies to fight the enemy. Battles are won after certain conditions are met (which basically involves killing all enemies in the fight). Overall, it’s a nice game to play and with over 800,000 players on the server, the existing in-game economy is ever changing.

Hardcore gamers might want to pass up this title for more serious and challenging game, but those looking for a simple investment of time might appreciate even the simple character built system of AoHO. With three distinct races and 9 job classes to choose from, players will at least enjoy being able to make their own custom hero character.

The music and sound effects add to the overall atmosphere of the game, though some players might wish for a mute option when the BGM gets a little too repetitive. Control-wise, the game responds nicely to the touch screen commands and the port from desktop browser game to Android app has mapped the functions quite nicely.