Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 Getting Greater Support for Multitasking

In his keynote address at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer laid out his company's plans for a pair of upgrades to Windows Phone 7.

The first of these will be released in March and will bring support for copy and paste. Microsoft had already promised that this feature is in development, and many had hoped this update would be released at MWC.

In addition, this new version will include support for cellular-wireless networks that use the CDMA standard. This will allow Verizon and Sprint to release their first devices running Windows Phone 7 by the end of June.

Multitasking at Last
In his keynote, Ballmer spent quite a bit of time talking about an operating system update that will be released later this year.

One of the most notable enhancements in this will be greater support for running multiple apps at the same time. The current version of this OS has drawn criticism for its lack of multitasking.

Joe Fiore, the head of the  Windows Phone 7 team, joined Ballmer on stage at the MWC and said, "When apps run in the background, you risk draining your battery. Our implementation provides a battery-safe solution for third-party multitasking."

In a demo, Fiore showed how this will work: pressing and holding on the smartphone's Back button will bring up a list of currently running software.

More Changes Are Coming
Fiore also demonstrated the updated web browser that will be coming later this year. This will be based on Internet Explorer 9, the latest version running on desktops. It's also going to include hardware-accelerated graphics.

The People Hub in Windows Phone 7 already pulls in information form social-networking services like Facebook, and Twitter is going to be added to this list. 

Consumers are also going to get greater support for working with Microsoft Office documents stored in the cloud.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer did not say exactly when this second upgrade to Windows Phone 7 will be released, other than it will be out by the end of this year.