Windows Phone Summary of the Week: May 16-22, 2011

G'day folks, it's that time of the week where the British spider returns (the little devil!) - it's wpcentral's summary of the week. The past seven days have been primarily focused around the aggravating build-up to the Verizon Trophy release date. More rumours have flown around than any celebrity magazine could handle, but we're almost there!

First off, the official wpcentral app has been announced! So keep an eye out for it on the Marketplace and check out the announcement for more information. We've also kick-started our newest weekly feature - developer interviews! Jay Bennett has provided us with the honour in being our first interviewee, read up on the interview.

Samsung Omnia 7 owners have rejoiced with not only leaked NoDo firmware, but Microsoft have re-enabled the updates for this particular handset. No word on the Focus still as of yet. Meanwhile, over at the HTC labs, the HD7S will be available on June 5th for $199 on AT&T and rumours have been circling surrounding the mystery 16MP device featured in an advert, which we covered a while back. Word is that the handset featured in that advert is actually the HTC Bresson and is apparently heading for Mango with beefed-up specifications. Oh, and Nokia still dislikes Qualcomm.

We've seen some more coverage in features coming up in Windows Phone 7.5, most notably; Lync, threaded & pinned email, SmartDJ and disabling that awful camera shutter sound - good stuff. Speaking of Mangos, the media have been receiving them as invitations to the Mango preview event, which is in two days.

Gaming on WP7 has seen a positive push this week with Hydro Thunder being available early next week followed by a line-up of incredibly popular titles including Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I. PayPal has made it's way onto the Xbox 360 system, which is a highly requested payment gateway for WP7 Marketplace, will it come to the platform anytime soon? Once you've had enough of playing Pac-Man Championship for a solid few hours, you can retire and apply the L.A. Noire wallpaper and theme to your device.

Developers! We recently covered how you can receive free advertising for your applications and/or games with certain events managed by Microsoft that provide you with free advert impressions as well as one years worth of AppHub subscription. Keep an eye out for our feed when we cover the next opportunity.

Head on past the break for our highlights.

Highlights