Windows Phone 7 Copy & Paste Functionality Lacking

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Amidst a great deal of excitement concerning the latest iteration of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform, officially known as Windows Phone 7, its just come to light that Windows Phone 7 will not offer copy and paste functionally as Microsoft believes that end users of its new mobile platform can do without a clipboard.

Interestingly, and quite bizarrely, Microsoft have confirmed that Windows Phone 7, and MS’s own office applications for the new mobile platform, are to dispense with copy and past functionality entirely, with Windows Phone executive Todd Brix stating that “It’s actually an intentional design decision…We try to anticipate what the user wants so copy and paste isn’t necessary.”

“We tried to focus on what the core use cases were,” Brix added. “Certainly there will be some people that won’t be happy with some of those decisions.”

As far as copying and pasting phone numbers, for example, Microsoft have confirmed that Windows Phone 7 will instead rely on what they term as ‘smart linking’ which will allow end users to double tap on a number in order to add it to their handset’s phone book.

This curious decision from Microsoft seems to fly in the face of Apple’s own experience when they also left copy and paste functionality out of the iPhone’s initial features and, as you’ll recall, Apple eventually had to cave in to user demands to have copy and paste functionality added when they eventually added the ‘features’ courtesy of the iPhone 3.0 OS.

Quite where MS are getting there feedback from we don’t know, but to leave clipboard functionality out of their new mobile platform strikes us as sheer stupidity (or narrow minded arrogance) and we suspect that when WP7 is released end users will act to leave MS in no doubt that copy and paste (clipboard) functionality is not something they are prepared to live with – especially concerning new iterations of MS’s Office applications.

Your thoughts are welcomed. Can you live without a clipboard on a smartphone?