The Dell Venue Pro smartphones running Windows Phone 7 are now available for order in the U.S.  The phones operate on T-Mobile’s network and are locked, so they cannot be used with AT&T’s wireless service.

Available with two memory capacities, 8GB and 16GB, the Venue Pro does not have user-replaceable memory card expansion.  The price of the two models is $99 and $149, respectively, with a two-year T-Mobile service contract.  Without a new or re-upped contract, the prices jumps to $449 and $449. 

The full-price versions are also locked to T-Mobile service.

If you want to take a Venue Pro – which for many Windows Phone watchers is the most anticipated of the 2010 WP7 releases – for a spin, you’re out of luck: at this time you can only order a Venue Pro directly from Dell.  T-Mobile stores aren’t currently selling the new Windows Phone, nor are there any indications that it soon will.  That said, after the Nexus One direct-sale disappointment, we wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see the new Dell phones in T-Mobile stores next year.

Microsoft has been losing ground in the smartphone market for some time.  Faced with game-changing advancements from Apple and Google in the last two years, the software giant has needed to do something entirely different with their mobile OS to become competitive again. 

To that end, today Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7 Series, a redesign and rebranding of Windows Mobile.

The Windows Mobile 7 UI has been radically altered throughout the OS.  The new interface is Zune inspired and filled with high-contrast, customizable tiles (seen left) that slide and move around the screen.  The tiles can represent alerts (new email, text messages), applications, feeds from social networks, contacts, etc. 

There are no more tiny drop-down menus that are frustratingly difficult to tap.  Everything has been enlarged for easy finger selection.

Multi-touch is now part of the OS out of the box, offering better views and control of maps, photos, web pages, etc.    The web browser has been replaced with a new, IE-based application, and includes a new font-rendering technology known as “pixel positioning”.

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WMExperts has posted a fascinating article concerning Microsoft’s possible plans for Windows Mobile 7.  In it, the author makes several new assertions, including the idea that two different versions of the operating system will be released, and one well before the other.

Based on information provided by “several sources,” WMExperts believes Windows Mobile 7 will come in two flavors. 

The first, a somewhat barebones version, Business Edition (BE), is designed to be run with a large amount of OEM customization and add-on software.  This would make sense given some manufacturers’ history of UI enhancements (like HTC’s TouchFLO, Sense).  Windows Mobile 7 BE, lacking some of the features and eye candy of its sibling, would also be ready to deploy sooner.  This, the article states, is the version that will be made available for the HTC HD2 later this year. 

But it’s the second version of 7, Media Edition (ME), that’s the real story. 

Nature abhors a vacuum, and that goes double for tech news types.  When supplied with little or no information, the talking heads will fill the void with any ol’ thing, baseless rumors and guesses being, more often than not, the medium of choice. And, like an anthropologist lecturing on peoples eons-dead, they deliver their speculation with absolute confidence. 

And that’s fine – hell, it’s even entertaining – but we usually leave the wild speculation to others.  That said, we also like to keep you updated on the latest specumation making the rounds whenever it seems credible.

The latest comes from Gizmodo, which has some interesting ideas on Windows Mobile in the new year.  In a nutshell, the story states that Windows Mobile 7 will indeed be shown at the MWC in February, that the OS will ship sometime in late 2010, and that there will be – contrary to recent reports – support for at least some WinMo 6.x applications, probably via emulation.

Each of these assertions seems reasonable given what we’ve been told over the last several months, but we won’t know anything for sure until mid-year.  Even if Microsoft shows off 7 in February (and we think they will, in some form at least), changes will come between then and year’s end.  The legacy support for existing third-party apps seems the most suspect, although new, fast mobile CPUs could make this a possibility. 

We can’t imagine Zune media components not being part of the mix, and there will surely be significant UI changes.  There could also be Minority Report-style gesture controls, Windows XP emulators, a Bluetooth neural interface and…

Wild speculation.  So tempting.

Just days after word came that we would all be getting our first look at Windows Mobile 7 next month at the MWC, BSN is reporting that the mobile OS has “definitely” been delayed until next year.

Definitely?  Or Definitely, maybe?

The story cites “representatives” from Lenovo, nVidia, HTC, Microsoft, etc., but doesn’t provide specific quotes from named or unnamed reps.

While the story may turn out to be true, it seems inconceivable that Microsoft wouldn’t be able to finalize the OS by the end of 2010 given A) the company’s resources, B) the time they’ve already had to work on WinMo7 and C) the 11+ months left in the year. 

The story goes on to state that some manufacturers are retooling planned WinMo handsets to run Google’s Android OS.  This wouldn’t be much of a leap even if 2010 is still the year for Windows Mobile 7’s release, as Android 2.1 is ready to roll and updates are coming fast and furious.

Rumors of delay are nothing new, but we hope this one proves incorrect, or at the very least misleading.  Microsoft could finalize WinMo7 in late 2010 with the OS showing up on devices beginning in early 2011.  This wouldn’t be so much of a delay as the reality of the way Microsoft’s mobile OS releases unfold. 

But if it is accurate, it’ll be only the latest in a long line of inexplicable behavior from the folks in Redmond where Windows Mobile is concerned.

via DownloadSquad