This week is the week of the Mobile World Congress, so as expected a lot of big things happening with the mobile industry. For one, Microsoft has finally unveiled its heavily delayed new mobile platform with a rather confusing name - Windows Phone 7 Series. (Seriously, why not just call it Windows Mobile 7?) And let's not forget Samsung's Bada OS that came to light not too long ago, and no one had much information on just a few days ago. Now, there are already videos of both of their prototypes in action. Videos after the break.

Let's start with the Bada - it actually looks pretty decent, and its fast. I'm sure it's due partly to the hardware itself too, as they mentioned that the Samsung Wave that the OS was demonstrated on sports more than 512 Mb of RAM, which is a pretty big deal for a smartphone. Like the Palm WebOS, they also seemed to emphasize its multitasking capabilities. However, the Bada will only reside on low-mid end Samsung devices, so it is not really considered as a competitor to the BlackBerry, Android, and iPhone OS's.

Windows Phone 7 Series, on the other hand, aims to be exactly that. Check out the video below to see it action and decide for yourself if it'll be a worthy contender.

It's really great to see Microsoft stepping up its game and finally shedding its older mobile platforms, which even up until Windows Mobile 6.5, had elements that were reminiscent of pre-2000 Windows operating systems. The lack of innovation from Microsoft in this area throughout the past 5 years or so was just saddening, to say the least.

Windows Phone 7 Series features an interesting clean and minimalistic user interface (perhaps a bit too minimalistic) as well as an app store and Xbox Live integration. Windows Phone 7 Series is Microsoft's chance to regain some of their lost market share in the past few years.

HTC, Garmin, Dell, Sony Ericsson, among many other manufacturers have already signed on to launch Windows Phone 7 Series devices as early as Q4 2010.

[via Engadget]