Okay Geek Farm
Screen Capture functionality not coming to Windows Phone 7
Daniel Carey
For media and technology junkies (much like ourselves) the ability to take screenshots has become an indispensable tool. It is often taken for granted, especially since it’s featured on just about every platform — ranging from desktop operating systems to the ever powerful, portable mobile phone. However, as most Windows Phone 7 users are likely aware, Microsoft’s flagship mobile platform is currently lacking in the screen capture department; and guess what? According to Microsoft, the feature won’t be coming anytime soon.
In a recent interview with Josh Lowensohn of CNET, Microsoft’s Director of Mobile Communications, Aaron Woodman, was asked if inbuilt screen capture functionality was to come in later builds of the OS. To which he replied:
“I have never sat in a user group — and I sit in a lot of user groups, a lot of retail groups — I’ve never heard an end user go ‘why can’t I take a screenshot of that?’ The reality is, we have a DRM requirement for our marketplace, which makes things like HDMI and those types of things out, more difficult. We’ve made a choice to have a more protected set of content on the phone and available to consumers, so we do have restrictions within that.” - Aaron Woodman.
So, it looks as though Microsoft’s attempting to honour their copyright agreements with app developers? Hmm, that just raises one question: Apple and Google both have copyrighted material, yet they both added screen capture functionality to their respective OS’, so what’s the big deal Microsoft? Sadly for now, there are no plans to add said feature to Windows Phone 7, so until it comes, we’ll all have to learn to live without it.
