The Mint

My first “smart” phone was a BlackJack II. It ran Windows Mobile 5. It was pretty awesome at the time. I could write software in Visual Studio and deploy to the BlackJack. I thought it was pretty advanced until I first saw the iPhone. Now that was a game changer.

I quickly turned in my BlackJack to eBay and purchased the original iPhone. I’ve had an iPhone ever since. I am very happy with my iPhone but I do miss the ability to deploy my own software onto the device. Obviously that can be done with iPhone using a Mac but I’m a Windows programmer and I’m not sure I have the time to learn another platform. Fortunately Microsoft has an answer to my problem in Windows Phone 7.

Windows Phone 7 is the best of both worlds to a .NET guy like myself. It is truly a smart phone with a full browser, 3G, WiFi and native apps. Best of all the apps are written using .NET of course. It was too good to pass up so I made the leap. After work today I headed down to the local AT&T store and purchased a Samsung Focus.

The new Metro UI will take some getting used to. I’m also not a big fan of the physical Back and Search buttons. I have no real argument against them but still not a fan. The 5MP camera is awesome. It is a huge improvement over the camera on my 3GS and it shoots 720P video. 

Of course the real reason I bought it is for app development. I have no idea what I want to build but I know I want to build something. Tonight I’ll be downloading the SDK and dropping the $99 fee to Microsoft. Tomorrow I’ll begin playing with the platform.