Android and iOS Users can now find out what Windows Phone 7.5 is like

Any Android or iPhone owners who have ever wondered what Microsoft's mobile operating system is like can now satisfy their curiosity

thanks to a HTML5 website which offers a working demo of Windows Phone 7.5. While it's far from offering the fully featured OS it does allow visitors to experience how it works and what it's like to access features such as email or the calendar on WP7. Anyone interested can point their mobile browsers towards http://aka.ms/wpdemo to try the demo.

It's a pretty smart move from Microsoft, and such a simple one that it's surprising it hasn't been done before. The elegantly simple tiled design certainly lends itself to being turned into a web-based version and should be an eye opener for those who don't want to be harassed by a sales person to experience something new in the mobile world.

With the release of Windows Phone 7.5, and the first of the Nokia handsets running the platform being made available, the platform seems to slowly be building momentum and this latest move is certainly a lot more productive than the giant phone which was recently erected in New York to welcome latest batch of Windows Phones in the US.

Despite a slow start things are finally starting to look up for the platform and recent figures have shown a significant spike in the number of people using its integrated Facebook app. In the space of two weeks, between November 11 and November 25, the figure shot up from 1,000,000 to 1,100,00 leading WMPU to calculate that this equates to over 600,000 new devices which have been purchased.

The number of apps in its marketplace also continues to increase and currently the figure stands at around 42,000 according to Windows Phone App List with the number of approved developers for the platform increasing more sharply within the last month.