I am, to my immense surprise, totally excited about Windows Phone 7 Series. After delays and incremental improvements to Windows Mobile 6.x, Microsoft has managed to spark interest in the latest evolution of its smart phone operating system.

Take whatever you know about the Redmond firm’s previous smart phone OS out of the window. Everything from the look and feel to the code is built from the ground up. The iconic start button has disappeared entirely, and has been replaced with tiles that can be configured and relocated for different applications. From what Microsoft has shown to the press, 7 Series is aimed at leveraging social networking applications, enhancing the experience with information pulled from the information cloud. 7 Series is also integrating Xbox Live and Zune - two Microsoft services - into the experience.

Instead of program groups, the new OS relies on “hubs”. Hubs, in Microsoft’s own words, bring together related content from the Web, applications and services into a single view to simplify common tasks. There are a total of six hubs – People, Pictures, Games, Music + Video, Marketplace and Office. From videos that Microsoft has shown to the public (through their website and various blogs) switching from hub to hub is easy and smooth, with clean transitions all around.

The change isn’t without pitfalls of course. Microsoft will be enforcing tighter controls on the hardware that’s going to go onto 7 Series powered smart phones, i.e. specific CPU clock speed, memory and even button layouts. There will also be no UI layering possible on 7 Series – that means no HTC Sense UI and Samsung TouchWiz.

7 Series is Microsoft’s answer to the surging smart phone war that’s currently raging in the marketplace. The change is radical, but is hardly unexpected, as more and more rivals eat into Microsoft’s marketshare. It’s like Microsoft finally realized what most of us were already thinking - a phone is not a PC – and it seems they built their user experience around that concept. It seems that 7 Series is far ahead of Windows Mobile 6.x, both in functionality and ease of use.

I’m genuinely excited at what 7 Series will bring to the table, and this is from somebody who says that the only Windows phone I liked was the one that didn’t feel like a Windows phone. Will the new OS create a new Renaissance for Microsoft? That remains to be seen, and as of press time the launch date of 7 Series branded smart phones are scheduled to hit before the holidays of this year.