Windows Phone 7
mobile phone operating system developed by Microsoft
Windows Phone 7 (WP7) is the first release of the Windows Phone mobile client operating system, released worldwide on October 21, 2010, and in the United States on November 8, 2010. It runs on the Windows CE 6.0 R3 kernel. It serves as the successor to Windows Mobile 6.5.
Windows Phone 7 was a complete overhaul of Microsoft's previous mobile Windows platforms. It was designed with the distinct flat-style Metro interface. Due to shell changes, Windows Phone 7 cannot run Windows Mobile 6 applications. The first major update to Windows Phone 7 was Windows Phone 7.5, codenamed "Mango", which was globally released on September 27, 2011. Windows Phone 7.x was succeeded by Windows Phone 8, which was released on October 29, 2012; existing Windows Phone 7.x hardware could not upgrade to the incompatible Windows Phone 8 software. As a compromise to existing users, Microsoft released Windows Phone 7.8 on January 31, 2013, adding a few features backported from Windows Phone 8, such as a more customizable start screen and the new bootscreen.
Microsoft ended support for Windows Phone 7 on January 8, 2013, and for Windows Phone 7.5 and 7.8 on October 14, 2014.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Windows Phone 7” is mobile phone operating system developed by Microsoft. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Windows, Phone and mobile, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “mobile phone operating system developed by Microsoft” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1854343. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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- Expand the search: follow Windows Phone 7 primary sources, Windows Phone 7 archive and Windows research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Windows Phone 7” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.