Windows Phone 7 has been quietly bubbling away in the background for the past few weeks with Android’s Froyo update and iPhone 4 laying waste to any big news about the platform.

But I’ve been keeping my eye on what’s been going on, and have been interested to hear on a few developments that have been announced for the platform.

Rumours abound that Windows Phone 7 devices will be shipped out to select developers very soon, and that some devices have been spotted booting in sub-30 seconds (that far outstrips iPhone and Android!).

Back to the more solid news, and there is a fun demo of the interface on the Windows Phone 7 site. An interesting perspective into how the platform differs in its user experience from iPhone and especially from Android.

Keep an eye on this post as it’s updated with more information as I find it.

Well that didn’t last long.

Engadget is reporting Windows Phone 7 Series has now been officially renamed to Windows Phone 7 – which is considerably easier to pronounce, remember, and it also actually makes some kind of sense.

Here’s to simpler product names!

What better way to write about the Nexus One, than on the Nexus One itself?

But first, a little history.

Until a few days ago, I had had a Nokia E61i, my then favourite phone of all time. Full QUERTY keyboard, S60 OS power, good 3G and E-mail, but most of all my loyal companion for many years.

For a short while (while that was out of commission) I had had an original iPhone; I found that a rather painful device, as my numerous posts on the subject gently hint at.

And last Thursday we embarked on the next phase – a Nexus One appeared on my desk.

Here’s my thoughts on the phone, having had it in my hands for a few short days.

Unfortunately earlier this weekend my trusty E61i died a horrible death. What’s annoying is that it shows some signs of life (the notification light comes on when you press power) but it doesn’t start booting. Think it’ll be long hours for me to figure out what’s going on, and even longer to get it sorted.

My outgoing E61i

So in the mean time, I needed (literally) a new phone – I didn’t fancy doing 300 miles in a weekend in a car that has failed its MOT (the other one hasn’t expired yet – don’t worry it’s still legal!) without a working phone to call the AA if it all went wrong.

So here’s what I got, and what I think of it.

The other day it came to my attention that the latest version of my mobile contract (T-mobile solo 30-day, £20pm, 500mins, unltd texts) now featured an extra 100 minutes and free unlimited internet for people who were starting a new contract. So I phoned up T-mobile, nicely asked them to move me on to this new deal, and they promptly charged me 25p for the honour of telling me, for some reason or another, that they couldn’t.