Which Phone 7 devices should you let on your network?

The business-focused among the first line of smartphones

I can’t help but roll my eyes when smartphone TV spots advertise watching big screen motion pictures on a five-inch screen. Really? “Avatar” on a smartphone? You think you’re going to convince me that I’m in a movie theater? In a pinch, maybe I would watch TV or movies on a smartphone, but I’m more interested about practical uses of a smartphone like for work. That’s why two phones stand out among the nine models introduced today as the first wave of handsets to run Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system.

Microsoft tries to make some sense of the myriad applications that clutter users home screens by grouping apps into “hubs” for the phone, entertainment and social media applications but also one dedicated Microsoft Office Mobile. There you’ll get mobile versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote. And because the idea is to allow a business user to bring their work in the office with them on the road, it also includes the collaboration service SharePoint.

“I have links to these SharePoint servers, so I can go in and browse the server content, open documents and do real, honest-to-goodness business productivity collaboration with other people at work,” said Joe Belfiore, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Windows Phone 7 program management as he shared a stage with CEO Steve Ballmer to demo Phone 7 in New York City.

One drawback to Office on Phone 7 is that it lacks a copy and paste function, which you would expect in a smartphone people would use for work. Microsoft says it will be added on via a software update early 2011.

Of the new models running Phone 7 introduced today, the LG Quantum to be offered by AT&T Mobility, seems targeted at the business user. AT&T emphasizes the Quantum’s slide-out horizontal physical QWERTY and Office Mobile. T-Mobile’s Dell Venue Pro  not only includes the word "pro" in the name, it also offers a vertical pull-down QWERTY keyboard, which means you’d be typing with the display in portrait mode while the LG’s works in landscape mode.

T-Mobile didn’t offer any pricing info for the Venue Pro and only said it, and an HTC HD7, would be available “in time for the holidays.” AT&T was equally vague about availability of the Quantum but did say it would sell for $199.99 plus the monthly cost of a voice and data plan under a two-year contract -- the same pricing as on its other two Phone 7 offerings, the Samsung Focus and HTC Surround.

Most enterprises have succumbed to pressure from employees to exercise their own personal choice as to what brand of smartphone to use for work. BlackBerry had been the preferred corporate brand, and when Apple’s iPhone came out in 2007, businesses at first didn’t want to support it, unsure of its security capabilities. But after enough employees, particularly CEOs, started using iPhones anyway, IT departments eventually got with the program and accommodated them.

If Phone 7 does as good a job supporting Office on a mobile device as Microsoft says it does, that could give Microsoft leverage in the smartphone race with employees who work in an office that runs on Office.

• Microsoft
• AT&T
• Dell
• HTC
• LG
• Microsoft
• Phone 7
• Samsung
• T-Mobile