Augmented Reality applications coming to Windows Phone 7

Augmented Reality applications are quickly becoming must have items on any mobile platform. Layar, the most famous one is now being pre-installed on several LG Android handsets and all the Galaxy S devices from Samsung. Google is pushing hard behind Goggles on Android too and the iPhone’s appstore is packed with AU applications (Layar is obviously in there too). But what about Windows Phone 7? Well nothing has been announced or shown yet and the lack of API for the digital compass doesn’t help either. The Camera API is also currently really limited. Ironically Microsoft was the first company to publicly talk about and demonstrate this technology back in 2008 during Bill Gates last CES Keynote but nothing came out of this since then, primary because of Windows Mobile’s messed situation. Now that Microsoft has a totally new Mobile OS and development platform (Silverlight + XNA) there’s hope that the company will push this kind of innovative technology in the near future. On interesting bit that I didn’t catch (thanks to Mark Arteaga for the heads up) is the last sample of the XNA Educational Courses I posted about yesterday : Bonus: Augmented Reality Sample