Lightning Review: Isaiah Mustafa’s Windows Phone 7 Walkthrough

 title=The other night Mr Old Spice Guy himself, Isaiah Mustafa, gave me a run through of Windows Phone 7. Here’s what I thought of his performance.

Microsoft had been talking up Mustafa’s geek cred from the moment I walked in the room. According to the Microsoft team, the man infamous for walking around in a towel and responding to people with videos on twitter had asked them to check whether or not he’d be able to plug his Xbox directly into the hotel’s LAN port to access Xbox Live so he could play Madden online with friends back home. For the demos, they’d set up some dummy accounts, which Mustafa laughed off, happily agreeing to log in with his own account details for his showcase.

Through serendipitous good fortune, I was at the back of the room when Mustafa walked in. Like a glacier made of diamonds, the level of cool suddenly exploded in the room as he walked in (not hard, given it was full of tech and gaming journalists). Tall, athletic and smiling, Mustafa walked over to me and extended his hand in friendship, as his eyes glanced down at my name badge.

“Ah, Gizmodo”, he said, and mock lifted a pair of dumbbells, as though I were a tweet about a louffre and he was wearing only a towel. The moment passed in an instant however, as he handed me a block of Windows Phone 7 chocolate, and started showing me through the phone features.

“This is so cool”, was his catchcry as he searched through his Facebook friends to pin one to the front page. “You’ll love this, Nick – check this out”, he exclaimed as he dove into the Zune music playing app to show me the artwork resting behind the Gorillaz tracks on his phone. His minders tried to pull him away, as Mustafa flicked on the camera, “Have a look at this, the camera is great… Oh, she’s cute, let’s take a photo of her!”

The demo lasted only minutes, but Mustafa had been bang on message. Even though he was clearly there at Microsoft’s invitation, he seemed genuinely excited by the new phone – he even refused to mention his iPod when I asked him if he’d previously used a Zune.

Since giving me the one-to-one demo, Mustafa has done a range of TV and radio spots for the mobile operating system. He’s done a superb job of promoting a mobile operating system to a market who aren’t quite sure whether or not they’re prepared to let Microsoft back into their pocket. But with Mustafa’s help, Windows Phone 7 could well have become the Phone you wish your phone smelled like.


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