Its taken them a while to wake up from the unrelenting blows from Apple but finally it appears that the geeks at Microsoft have created a rival to the iPhone.

A little late in the game and so far pummelled with sceptism even before its official release -

"Microsoft needs to kill Windows Phone 7 and avoid further embarrassing itself by shipping this throwback," Gruman wrote in a July 15 posting on InfoWorld's Mobile Edge blog. "It's not a question of whether Windows Phone 7 will fail--it will--but how long it will take Microsoft to admit the failure. For the company's sake, the earlier it fesses up, the better."

According to Gruman, Windows Phone 7's sins include an "awkward and unsophisticated" UI that "recalls Microsoft's history of clunky design" and use of "inexcusably old technology" such as Internet Explorer 7. Microsoft, he says, has come up with "an imperfect copy of an old iPhone."

Nuff said, read Galen Gruman's (InfoWorld) review here.

If you're still keen after reading that, then you can check out the Windows Phone 7 homepage here.