Windows Phone 7 emulator now available, we give it a spin

If you are eager to test the new Windows Phone 7 and can't wait until its official launch, there is now a way to do that. Microsoft have released an emulator which gives let's you try out their latest mobile OS straight from your PC.

A standard Windows Phone 7 bin-file comes with the dev kit, but it offers almost nothing except the OS environment. It's intended for developers for testing and debugging their apps.

Shortly after the tools' release however, a new unlocked OS image leaked, packing the Windows Phone 7 OS by Microsoft in its current stage of development. MS are not surprised by the leak but wanted to remind everyone that most of the platform is still in the early stages of its development and none of its parts is even close to a final stage.

Well, the curiosity is the strongest motivator so we tried it and extracted some nice screenshots. As was to be expected, the performance is far from perfect so we can hardly pass a verdict but at least we get the idea what to expect.

Windows Phone 7 OS screenshots

If you want to try the emulation for yourself you need to have a Windows Vista or 7 PC and you should follow these steps:

• You must install Microsoft's Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone CTP from here (the process requires system reboot).
• Download this image file.
• Unrar the downloaded bin into C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\WindowsPhone\v7.0\Emulation\Images\ .
• Go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft XDE\1.0\ and find the XDE.exe. Right click on it and then select "Create Shortcut" (you may be asked to save that shortcut on the desktop).
• Go to the properties of your new shortcut and modify the Target field as this: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft XDE\1.0\XDE.exe" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\WindowsPhone\v7.0\Emulation\Images\WM70Full.bin" .
• Run the shortcut and be patient.

Note that 64-bit Windows users must select Program Files (x86) folder instead the original Program Files.

Source