A page describing the various Windows Phone 7 status icons on the new Microsoft website recently discovered by Engadget reveals an interesting tidbit about the WP7 operating system, it already has support for both of the popular 4G cellular network standards – LTE (technically a 3.9G technology) and WiMAX.

Of course it’s ultimately up to the OEMs to produce 4G-enabled WP7 devices (and carriers to sell them), but at least this gives some credibility to the earlier rumors of a LTE version of the Dell Lightning and a WiMAX version of an LG WP7 phone.

With native support for these next-generation standards in the v1 version of the OS suggests that we could see such devices sooner than later. Bring on the 100Mbit data rates I say.

Note: I will be attending the Microsoft/Telstra Windows Phone 7 press event on October 12 in Sydney.

Update: The page has since been edited and many of the icons removed. You can still see the original icons via Google Cache.

One of the last pieces of the Windows Phone 7 puzzle yet to be fully revealed in all its Metro glory, the Windows Live phone portal, has been teased once again in a recent promotional video on Microsoft.com.

Although this isn’t the first time the screenshot has made a brief, blurry and low-resolution appearance; the first at Microsoft TechEd Australia 2010 a month ago, this video however does confirm the picture is of a web interface where features such as “Find my phone” and the ability to remotely organize photos and contacts can be accessed for free.

The video is embedded below and the screenshot appears at 0:49. Don’t blink or you might miss it.

Update: Replaced image with higher resolution version thanks to “RoguePlanetoid“.

For those who missed the live webcast of the keynote or am interested in the other happenings here at the Internet Explorer 9 “Beauty of the Web” launch event here at the San Francisco Design Center, here’s a few photos from the small gathering of press, partners and Softies around the browser of the hour.

After the “Beauty of the Web” keynote earlier today I got a chance to speak with several design leads of the Internet Explorer 9 team – Mary-Lynne Williams, Jane Kim and Jess Hollbrook to learn more about the decisions made to make one of the most designed Internet Explorer releases for a long time.

The first thing you’ll notice with IE9 is that just how “light” it looks. Even though the IE9 chrome takes up less screen real estate than both Chrome and Firefox 4, it was actually not a goal of the team to build the smallest chrome. A fundamental concept of the new approach to Internet Explorer’s design is that “it is not about the pixel count, but what you do with it”.

Whilst the team doesn’t claim their single-line design as the solution to the tabs-over-address bar dilemma, it was decided after all the two-line configuration was too distracting for users. The team also determined the window’s title bar was redundant because the name of the page was already displayed in the tab.

To further reduce the number of concepts in the chrome, the address bar was merged with the search bar after statistics showed that people used both bars just as much to search. They found that the new OneBox is not just simpler but actually helps people feel like they’ve mastered the functionality of the browser and gives them more confidence to just search without thinking about which field to search in.

Due to the one-line configuration, determining the size of the OneBox was no easy feat. To scientifically optimize the default size, researchers went out to find the top 2000 domain names and made sure that most of them could be displayed without truncation. Subtly, the OneBox also adapts its size proportionally to the screen resolution to fit approximately a third of the width for greater than 1024px and half the width for 1024px or smaller.

An obvious question people have asked ever since the UI leaked out a month ago is that how the browser deals with many tabs. Not surprisingly there is a power-user perception that everyone runs with dozens of tabs but as the design team found out via telemetry that it is simply not true.

For 90% of the browsing sessions they analyzed, most people had 4 or fewer tabs open and never more than 8. As such, on a reasonbly sized display, there is more than sufficient room for tabs used by most users.

Although the performance and standards capabilities of Internet Explorer 9 exceeds the competition today, even Microsoft acknowledges that they might not be in the lead for very long. However, the new user-experience seems to have enough merit on its own to differentiate IE9 as not just another release with better standards support. This is actually pretty neat.

Today will officially be known as the day Internet Explorer fought back. Join Kip (LiveSide) and I as we bring you all the thrills and spills from the “Beauty of the Web” keynote at the San Francisco Design Center.

You can find the live webcast stream on the Microsoft site here but we invite you to follow along our liveblog with reader comments for extra commentary goodness.

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They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder which is one reason you’ll want to pay attention to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 “Beauty of the Web” event next week.

Join Kip Kniskern from LiveSide and I in another always-entertaining group liveblog of the keynote where Microsoft’s expected to launch a beta version of the browser in all its glory with an emphasis on design if all the marketing materials are to be believed. The venue, the San Francisco Design Center, probably has some relevance too.

The keynote is expected to start Wednesday, September 15 11am US Pacific Daylight Time (check your local times here). Alternatively, download the iCal I prepared earlier for convenient calendaring.

According to Microsoft “beautiful is feeling the love”, so bring on the love I say.