At this year’s South By Southwest Conference in Austin, we had a brief discussion with Loke Uei Tan, Senior Technical Product Manager, Mobile Developer Experience for Microsoft, about the new Windows Phone 7 Series.  As he demonstrated the phone to us, we queried on two key features of importance to many of our readers.

First off, while demoing the Photos Hub, we asked Loke if the social integration, such as Facebook Photos, was developed by third parties or by Microsoft in house. We also asked if other third parties such as Picasa would be able to build additional hub plugins.  Unfortunately, he confirmed they were all built in house, and at launch no other third parties would be included.

Secondly, Loki said that Windows Phone 7 Series supported one exchange account. This is an interesting statement considering Slashgear’s recent hands on review reported support for multiple exchange accounts.  Unfortunately our discussion was cut short so we were unable to query further. We’ll file this in the nebulous category until further clarification is found.

This of course doesn’t mean that these features won’t be released post launch.  So we can continue to be hopeful that Microsoft will release updates to contain them at a later date.