Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Customers Lacking Choice

People looking to buy their favourite Windows Phone 7 handsets in the UK are faced with limited choices, from hardware specifications to service providers.

Microsoft is playing a safe game with its new Windows Phone 7 operating system, and so are its partners, with hardware specs for all of the newly launched Windows Phone 7 handsets by HTC, LG and Samsung featuring pretty much the same technology.

All the smartphones have a 1GHZ Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 512MB of RAM, a 5MP camera and 8GB of storage, the only difference being the add-on applications offered by the makers and the service providers.

Microsoft's own incorporated Windows Phone 7 applications, Bing integration, Internet Explorer, Office, Windows Live and Xbox Live, for example, are also available on every phone.

As far as the service providers are concerned, choices are again limited, tech news site The Inquirer reports. 

Samsung's Omnia 7 device is available on Three, Orange and T-Mobile. Orange will also provide HTC 7 Mozart while T-Mobile will only offer Omnia 7. Vodafone will offer HTC 7 Trophy and the LG Optimus 7. HTC's HD7 will only be available for O2.