Microsoft unveiled its Windows Phone 7 Series during a Feb. 15 press conference at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. The new smartphone operating system certainly represents a sea change from previous editions of Microsoft's mobile franchise; a visual breakdown of its user interface, along with the "hubs" that aggregate both mobile applications and Web services into easy-to-access subject areas, can be found here.

(Despite the gloss of Microsoft's presentation, I still have some questions. First and foremost, is Microsoft planning on a branded smartphone to go along with the devices from its hardware partners? Will devices in the Windows Phone 7 Series be able to multitask, unlike Apple's iPhone? What form will its revamped mobile-applications Marketplace take? And I'm guessing--but it's still unconfirmed--that the devices will support Silverlight for A/V, if only because Adobe and Microsoft officials both told me that Windows Phone 7 will not support Flash at the outset.)

Near the end of the presentation, Microsoft flashed the logos of its hardware partners in the endeavor, including Qualcomm (which will apparently works on optimizing hardware and software), Hewlett-Packard, HTC, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and Dell. Microsoft has indicated that its various OEMs will produce devices that stick close to a single hardware template, emphasizing the touch screen as well as three mechanical buttons (Start, Search and Back). Most of those hardware partners have a good deal of experience in the mobile-device arena, but the sight of Dell's logo made me wonder if the computer maker was planning to join them in releasing a Windows Phone 7 Series device.

A discussion with a Microsoft executive immediately following the conference yielded nothing on that front, except the claim that hardware manufacturers were still finalizing their plans. But I'm betting it'll look something like the Mini 3:

On Jan. 6, Reuters published a story about Dell offering its Mini 3 touch-screen smartphone in the U.S., with Google Android for an operating system and AT&T providing coverage. The device was predicted to hit the market sometime before June 2010, according to the report, but there was no word on a price-point. (It's already been released in China and Brazil.)

Dell clearly wants to be a player in mobile devices, which seems to be a smart move on the surface: As every pundit and their mother has noted over the past year, smartphones as mobile computing platforms have become the Next Big Thing, even as traditional PC sales remained anemic for much of 2009. In its official announcement, however, Dell declined to offer any sort of specs, which makes it difficult to compare against another touch-screen device like, say, the Nexus One (although they did offer that photograph of the prototype, above).

But if Dell also issues a device that runs Windows Phone 7, I'll bet it has a form factor very similar to the Mini 3, albeit with those three mechanical buttons that'll likely be standard in all devices running the operating system. At the very least, we'll find out by the fourth quarter of 2010, when the first Windows Phone 7 devices are slated to hit the marketplace.

(And by the way, my theory that Microsoft would roll its newest mobile operating system into the wild by the end of 2010? Completely validated. All hail my predictive powers.)