Microsoft allegedly used non-production HTC Mazaa for its MIX11 Windows Phone demos

By Tom Warren, on 25th Apr 11 1:22 pm with 5 Comments

HTC Mazaa at MIX11?

Microsoft may have used an unreleased HTC Mazaa device during its MIX11 Windows Phone demos.

The HTC Mazaa is a CDMA Windows Phone device that will arrive on the U.S. Sprint network later this year. Wmpoweruser reports that a Microsoft rep in Japan admitted that the device was used at MIX11. The device looks similar to a HTC 7 Trophy but may include the new gyroscope hardware that will be supported with the Windows Phone “Mango” update later this year. The revelation of the new device could also explain Microsoft’s benchmark demo against an iPhone and Android device.

Joe Belfiore, Director of the Windows Phone program, demonstrated Internet Explorer 9 mobile against Apple’s iPhone 4 and Google’s Samsung Nexus S devices at the MIX11 developer conference in Las Vegas. Belfiore used a HTML5 speed reading demo from Microsoft’s own ietestdrive.com site. The demo ran at around 20 FPS on Windows Phone “Mango” and 11 FPS on the Android Nexus S device. Despite having a five second head start, the iPhone 4 crawled along at 2 FPS and failed to finish in time. Google’s Android device finished in second place behind Windows Phone’s Internet Explorer 9.

XDA-developers originally unveiled the HTC Mazaa device earlier this month. The site notes that the device includes a single LED flash and a 3.7″ screen.

  • http://about.me/edit/AngeloGopaul Eingoluq

    And so the plot thickens

  • http://doctorwhofan98.wordpress.com/ doctorwhofan98

    So they used a to-be-released phone. So what?

  • http://twitter.com/abhi1manyu Abhimanyu Jamwal

    microsoft, that was shameful…..you have broken the untold rule of trust…never ever show a to-be-released phone unless you are sure its already leaked, you have betrayed us :P

  • Wheelerkl

    Yeah, so what? They were demoing a to-be-released update. :-) Also, I remember Joe using an Asus phone at MIX11 and in previous demos. So they have aways pretty much used phones that were not on the market.

  • Wheelerkl

    Just went back to look at the demos. Joe used the Asus for all the other demos. He switched to the HTC for the IE9 demo. It’s still not a big deal. Mango will be deployed to all current WP7 devices as well.