The browser wars have a new winner after major updates to platforms

Just a couple of months ago, Microsoft bragged with the performance of its IE9 browser after it blew competition out of the water in a browser benchmark fight plotted by Redmond itself. But two months later, iOS 5 is official, and we have a whole new ball game. Running Mobile Safari on an iPhone 4 updated to a beta of iOS 5 shows that there's a new winner in the browser battle.

Safari scored a whopping 31fps despite the fact that it runs on a handset with a higher resolution, dwarfing the 26fps result on the WP7 handset and the 15fps on Android. The iPhone 4 sports a screen rendering 640x960 pixels in comparison to the respective Windows Phone device which only had to support 480x800 pixels. Initially, Microsoft's browser claimed to succeed due to its hardware accelerated HTML5, but while Redmond's new platform is about to use new hardware, the iPhone 4 manages to outscore with its year-old silicon.

Microsoft releases Android developer poaching package for Windows Phone 7

Microsoft's App Guy has quite a job on his baby-soft hands: to boost Windows Phone 7's numerically-challenged Marketplace by encouraging developers to port apps across from other platforms. The little fellow helped iPhone devs out a couple of months ago with an API mapping tool to makes it easier to translate iPhone APIs to WP7 code. Now he's extended the mapping tool to work with Android APIs too, and backed it up with a 90-page white paper and a promise to get more involved in developer forums.

Windows Phone 7 is getting 8 new Xbox Live games

Considering that the E3 Expo is being held all this week in Los Angeles, where gaming is the name of the game, it’s a fitting for Microsoft to announce some upcoming games that will be arriving for their Windows Phone 7 mobile platform.
Needless to say, the platform will be getting its dose of gaming with recognizable titles like Angry Birds, Sonic the Hedgehog: Episode I, and Plants vs Zombies all arriving this month, but there’s no arguing that handset owners will be starving for some more as well to satisfy their appetite. Well, they’re going to be excited to know that Microsoft announced 8 new Xbox Live games arriving on the platform “in the coming months.” These include Beards and Beaks, Hasta la Muerte, Let’s Golf 2, Pac-Man CE DX, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction, Tentacles, Top Gun and Z0mb1es.

Tech evangelist touts Windows Phone 7 as the "most secure" smartphone OS

Android and iOS have Windows Phone 7 squarely beaten when it comes to adoption rates. But the recent security threats and privacy issues surrounding Android and iOS may work in Microsoft's favor. Dave Northey of Microsoft Ireland explained to Silicon Republic why he thinks Windows Phone 7 is the "most secure" smartphone OS on the market.
Northey explains that WP7 is inherently more secure, because of memory compartmentalization: "We keep applications away from the bones of the OS. When an application fires up, the OS will give it a dynamically allocated security bubble, for lack of a better word, and every app has its own one of those."
These 'security bubbles' are in contrast to both Android and iOS, in which some apps have been found to steal information from one another. Northey says that "there's no other smartphone on the market that's as secure."
When WP7 was released, it was promoted as a multimedia device for the average consumer. But Northey is optimistic about the announcement of more enterprise features in the Mango update. But will it be enough to make Windows Phone 7 competitive with iOS and Android? Given the increasing concerns about mobile security, this could convert a lot of enterprise customers. And then we'll see the average consumer follow suit, a la BlackBerry.

Microsoft imposes limits on bulk app publishing

If you're a user of Windows Phone 7, or any smartphone OS, you've probably learned that the 'New' category isn't an effective means of finding the best apps. But recently, Windows Phone users have been plagued by so-called 'bulk app publishing', in which developers will release 50 or even 100 apps at once, effectively flooding the 'New' category.

And, in an impressive show of customer regard, Microsoft has imposed restrictions to alleviate the problem. Writing on the Windows Phone Developer Blog, Todd Brix admits that bulk publishing "degrades [the] customers' experience...pushing the other new apps out and reducing the diversity of the shopping experience."

So, effective immediately, developers can only post 20 apps per day. They can still submit them in greater numbers, but only 20 can be certified on any given day. Twenty might still sound like a lot, but it will decrease the likelihood of seeing 100 minor variations on a single app crowding the 'New' category of the Marketplace.

Of course, there's still the issue of spam apps. But we can't single out Microsoft for letting those slip through. That's a problem for another day.

Discovering WP7 app via WP7applist

Discovering new apps is always one of the most important and difficult things in the new smartphone ecosystem, especially as the number of total apps keeps growing and growing. The Windows Phone Marketplace is running towards 20,000 total apps, so discovery is becoming more and more important in finding quality apps that will fit into your daily usage. The full featured web store for the Marketplace is planned to launch in time for the the WP 7.1 Mango update expected early this summer. But, until then one of the best options is WP7applist, which has just released an app into the Marketplace.
WP7applist is a great tool for search and discovery in the WP Marketplace, but their website has never worked quite right in the mobile browser on Windows Phone 7 devices. Now, there is a fancy new app to help you discover new apps. The app has a Spotlight page filled with featured apps, but the real value comes from the Discovery page which allows users to sort apps into new releases, recently updated, recent price drops and apps that have become free. Each app link gives information, screenshots and reviews of apps as well as an easy link to the official Marketplace to download or purchase apps.
The app even includes a Live Tile which will allow you to keep track of the total number of apps in the Marketplace as well as the number of newly released apps and app updates over the past 24 hours.
As of right now, WP7applist is an invaluable tool for WP7 users, but it's unclear how the site will fare once the full featured web Marketplace launches. There is a good chance that the future may hold the same fate as AppBrain, which is a similar service for Android that has lost a lot of its appeal since the Android Market web store had its massive overhaul in February.