An undisclosed Microsoft research project named ?Menlo?, has been revealed as a prototype mobile phone and operating system.
The Menlo project was thought to be a tablet PC, but now looks to be a prototype mobile device based around user experience and navigation. The revelation came from a research paper, "User Experiences with Activity-Based Navigation on Mobile Devices", written by Mary-Jo Foley of ZDNet. The device is described as being a ?prototype? with a ?touch screen? and bizarrely, a ?barometer?.
The paper describes the device: "Menlo is a prototype mobile device with a capacitive touch screen (4.1? diagonal, 800×480) running Microsoft Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2 which incorporates a Bosch BMA150 3-axis accelerometer and Bosch BMP085 digital pressure sensor (barometer),"
It?s seems unlikely that the Menlo project will ever go to retail. Rather, the device has been designed in order to test a new Silverlight-based application called ?Greenfeild?, that allows users to locate a parked car.
The paper describes Greenfield as and application: "To explore activity-based navigation we designed Greenfield, an application that provides an activity-based trail to a parked car. This is useful both in situations where one has lost one’s car and needs to find it, but also in finding a car parked by someone else, e.g. a private car parked by another family member, or a shared business vehicle."
Foley?s paper suggests that Microsoft could be developing a new mobile OS that isn?t WP7, that will run on a number of different processors.
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