Winners of a Windows Phone 7 app design competition at the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2010 in Poland were presented with a preview device running the brand new mobile OS, making them the first non-Microsoft developers to get their hands on one.
Christian Hood and Eric Lo, members of Team Beastware from the Advanced Technologies Academy in Las Vegas, won the Windows Phone 7 “Rock Star” Award for their Droid Assault game.
Like the other 130 apps entered into the competition, Droid Assault was built using the Microsoft Silverlight or XNA framework and an emulator (Windows Phone Developer Customer Technology Preview) because no actual Windows Phone 7 devices are publicly available yet to develop on.
“They created an experience that was pretty compelling on the device,” said Anand Iyer, a senior product manager on the Windows Phone 7 team. “I was just blown away when I loaded it up on my phone. They took a leap of faith that it would work and it did.”
Team Beastware are not the only Imagine Cup participants that will receive a Windows Phone 7 device; all 400 participants in this year’s competition will receive vouchers that they can exchange for the new device when it is released this autumn.
Students who wish to submit apps for Windows Phone 7 to Windows Marketplace can join Microsoft’s DreamSpark programme and the US$99 submission fee is waived.
