Windows Phone 7 is finally here.  The good is that there's lots of hardware varieties to choose from, much like Android.  Also in the good news category is the slick and easy to used polished user interface that comes standard with WP7.  The bad news is that many features are notably missing -- hot swappable SD memory, copy/cut/paste, and true third-party multitasking.

But there's hope yet for those who have purchased Windows Phone 7 handsets, or are thinking about it.  Microsoft is rumored to be planning a massive update to the young operating system according to wpcentral.

The news was leaked by overexcited Windows Phone 7 developer Chris Walsh, who couldn't keep quiet about the update's inclusion of copy/cut/paste, free voice-guided Bing navigation, custom ringtone support, a third-party multitasking solution, and more.

The update is rumored to land as early as January, in time to go head to head with Google's Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" and Apple's iOS 4.3.

If indeed all those rumored features make it to the finished product, Microsoft would unleash a wicked competitor on the market.  As one Twitter poster put it, "MS took 3 months to do what Apple did in 3 years."

Another poster comments, "Let's just say, they could have called it Windows Phone 8."

Let's just say Google and Apple are doubtless watching closely how this one plays out.