Exactly one week ago, we told you about a new service coming to Windows Live which brings the world of Windows Phone 7 and Windows Live together – Windows Phone Live. Well it seems like the guys at PGMAG.com who had recently gotten their hands on a Windows Phone 7 technical preview unit also got access to this new service, and gladly posted a screenshot of it:
It does exactly what was announced last week – allowing users to map, ring, lock and erase their lost Windows Phone 7s right from the website, for free. What’s interesting from this screenshot is that from the looks of it, the Windows Phone Live service will be part of Windows Live Devices. It will possibly work in a similar way to how you can currently add your mobile devices to Windows Live Devices. But instead of bringing you to the page for setting up SMS services (http://sms.live.com), if it detects a Windows Phone 7 device, it will take you to the Windows Phone Live website instead.
We also noted a Zune 4.7 screenshot on PCMAG.com indicating that photos on your Windows Phone 7 can be uploaded automatically onto Windows Live Photos:
On the topic of file syncing, we were quite disappointed to read the following in a review of the Windows Phone 7 by Paul Thurrott:
Office hub
The Office Mobile 2010 apps are basic, of course, but functional. On the plus side, you can seamlessly sync OneNote notes with SkyDrive, and any Office documents with SharePoint. You cannot, however, sync Word docs, PowerPoint presentations, or Excel workbooks with SkyDrive, which seems like an odd miss.
The official announcement on Windows Phone Live also specifically mentioned “exchange OneNote files” only, with no mention of other types of Office documents. We’re not sure if this is simply because it is still in technical preview stages (and many things can still change between now and final), but if we assume that the new Windows Phone Live would carry on the functionalities of the old My Phone, then we should expect the following file types to be able to be synced (to SkyDrive) according to current My Phone documentations:
| Data | File type |
| Photos |
jpg, jpeg, gif, png, tif, fit, wbmp, bmp, opl, n3a, ota |
| Music |
mp3, aif, mid, amr, aac, au, awb, dm, m4a, midi, mp1, mp2, mpa, ogg, ram, rng, wav, wma, wve |
| Videos |
3pg, 3gpp, mp4, avi, wmv, mpg, mpeg |
| Documents |
doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, pdf, txt, 1sp, rtf, html, htm, cab, pwi, wks, wps, wdb |
| Contacts, calendar, tasks, favorites, and text messages |
Synchronization for this data is not based on the file extension. |
The news about the lack of Office documents sync (except OneNote) is definitely disappointing, but seeing that Windows Phone Live is integrated into Windows Live Devices sounds pretty promising. At the very least, having it integrated with Windows Live Devices means that we might see future versions of Windows Phone 7/Windows Phone Live to support Windows Live Sync. But when will we see that day?
Editor’s note: While writing this post, I found it really confusing to type “Windows Phone Live”. Perhaps it’s just me, but maybe it might be a better idea to brand it as “Windows Live Phone” instead? After all, it IS as "Windows Live” service!