Microsoft has officially announced the final version of its latest smartphone OS, Windows Phone 7, to manufacturers. The RTM (Release to Manufacturing), as Microsoft calls it, means that the OS is now ready to be released to Microsoft's partners, who will then integrate it to their respective hardware (phones, in this case).
According to a blog post on the official Windows Phone blog, this release is their biggest milestone. Prior to being RTM'd, Microsoft has had nearly ten thousand devices running automated tests daily, over a half million hours of active self-hosting use, over three and a half million hours of stress test passes, and eight and a half million hours of fully automated test passes. Apart from these, Microsoft says that it has had thousands of independent software vendors and early adopters testing the software in order to provide them feedback.All this basically means that we can start expecting the first official releases of handsets based on this platform in the near future. While we are not expecting a launch immediately, there is a possibility of the first handsets from manufacturers in a months time. Microsoft had earlier released a technical preview to which they had made some changes.
