LG has lifted the covers off its first Windows Phone 7 mobile, the LG Optimus 7, and then swiftly put the covers back on.
The debut of the smart phone was announced on the official LG blog, which Recombu spotted, but the blog post was quickly taken down as it was ahead of this afternoon’s official Microsoft unveiling. We suspect Redmond wasn’t too happy about the phone being premiered ahead of time, but just for you, here’s a Google cache of the blog post.
Specs were revealed for the new handset. It has a 3.8-inch capacitive touchscreen offering 800×480 pixels, 16GB of internal memory, and a 5-megapixel camera with an LED flash that can record HD video at 720p. A 360-degree panoramic shot mode lets you stitch pictures together. There’s also a 1,500mAh battery, Bluetooth 2.1, an accelerometer, a proximity sensor, an ambient light sensor and a digital compass.
The Optimus 7 will use Live Tiles, the Windows Phone 7 start screen interface, which divides the OS into six hubs — People, Pictures, Games, Music + Video, Marketplace and Office. It will also connect to popular Microsoft services such as Xbox Live for games, and Zune for unlimited music streaming.
There’s voice to text transcribing for Facebook and Twitter updates, and an augmented reality app called Scansearch that should allow you to search for online information about real-world content you look at with your camera.
LG is also making a big deal about a new Play-To feature, which it said was exclusively developed for the Optimus 7 to allow you to access pictures, music and video through any DLNA-compatible device. This potentially allows you to listen to music playing on your phone through your home speakers, or looking at pics through your TV.
This is the first in a number of Windows Phone 7 mobiles we’ll see debut today, with handsets from HTC, Samsung and potentially others expected.