Over 8500 Windows Phone 7 devices in the wild

Remember how Pocket-lint used its detective skills to determine that Microsoft sold just over 8000 Microsoft Kin handsets, by seeing how many people had signed up to the dedicated Kin App?

Well, using the same trick has allowed us to see how many Windows Phone 7 handsets Microsoft has already given out ahead of the launch of the new mobile operating system in October.

Australian blogger, Long Zheng, who runs istartedsomething.com found at the end of July that according to the Facebook application configured exclusively for Windows Phone 7 devices, Microsoft had seeded 3076 mobile phones into the hands of developers, Microsofties and a handful of US journalists. 

Fast forward 17 days and that number has shot up to over 8000 units, beating the number of Microsoft Kin handsets that registered in total, and suggesting that Microsoft isn't shy when it comes to getting people on board and that's before it dishes one out to every Microsoft employee.

Zheng, at the time, acknowledged that the phone has a long way to go to catch up to Apple's 59 million tally for the iPhone, but it's interesting to see that Microsoft isn't messing about here getting devices out to developers who really believe they can make the OS shine when it launches later this year.

It's also very interesting to see that the number of users has more than doubled in just 2 weeks. Microsoft is clearly serious about making sure this launch is going to be a huge success.

Should more operators hand out phones to key developers worldwide? Let us know what you think in the comments below.