Windows Phone 7.5 Mango review
Microsoft has announced that the upcoming version of Windows Phone, codenamed “Mango,” will be coming to a device near you this summer.
To keep up with advances in competitors’ mobile OSs, Microsoft will add at least 500 features to its mobile investment, and hopes to plug all the holes in the first two versions.
The improvements detailed here won’t necessarily look or behave the same when the final ‘alpha’ version appears in Q4; as often happens, features and UI enhancements may well be revised before Mango release.
Key features
The original lack of certain useful features such as multitasking and copy-and-paste have already been addressed. Now, the Mango revision is rapidly approaching, bringing with it a raft of tempting features like multitasking, Facebook/Twitter integration, step-by-step voice guidance, third-party support for live tiles, and groups.
Social network integration
Mango elevates Facebook integration a notch – the live tile is more prominent, and offers status updates, IMs, check-ins, comments and other notifications directly on the tile, all part of Microsoft’s theme of ‘glance and go’.
Mango now provides group functionality; the ‘all’ pivot screen now shows a group section at the top and the ‘New’ button on the toolbar enables you to create a new contact or new group, then choose a name for it. In the next step you can choose members for the group.
Having created the group you can access a special hub for it – a set of live tiles, dynamically updated from Facebook and Twitter, each one representing a member of the group. There are icons for texting or emailing members of the group.
The usual Twitter and Facebook functionality is available through the hub – status updates, picture uploads, comments, likes, photo galleries of individuals or whole groups, etc.
With groups you can prioritize updates, create a group of those people for whom you want up-to-the minute updates, with a normal (or even a lesser) status for those contacts who ‘can wait’.
Take a look at this engadget video:
Windows Phone Mango Social and Email
Groups and contacts can be pinned to the Start menu, with a live tile for each group hub. Mango allows you to add tags whilst viewing Facebook photos or albums – tap the face of whoever you want to tag, and you have the option of tagging yourself or a Facebook contact.
Email and messaging
Multiple email accounts can be linked together into a single combined inbox, meaning you can link your high priority accounts and omit other less important ones.
Email conversations can now be grouped together in a continuous thread, with individual emails minimised so you can scroll over the whole thing and pick the important ones or skip the lot.
So you can see a comprehensive email history for any individual.
Messaging Threads have integrated SMS, Facebook, Windows Live Messenger, and Twitter together into one seamless thread, while making it easy to switch back and forth.
The messaging app will support threads too. You get the chance to switch between text, Facebook chat, and IM (Windows Live) all within the same chat thread. If you’ve been talking to someone on Facebook and they have to disappear, you can both pick up the conversation where you left off.
Mango now has voice dictation, so you can speak your message and have incoming messages read to you.
Actually all sorts of speech-to-text/text-to-speech capabilities have been incorporated into Mango.
Multitasking
An extended press of the back button pulls up the card-view task switcher; each open app is shown as its own card. Swipe left or right to the card of your choice. We expect to see a healthy selection of multitasking apps in the Marketplace when Mango goes live.
Third-party background audio will be enabled, for a richer web experience.
Live tiles will emphasize Microsoft’s ‘glance and go’ mantra.
Mango opens the door for third-party apps to put dynamic updates directly on Start menu tiles. The Weather Channel app for example shows the temperature and weather condition wherever you are.
Enjoy this video on multitasking:
Windows Phone Mango Multitasking and Maps
Mango includes voice turn-by-turn navigation, a female robot voice is included free with the OS.
The new maps are tightly integrated with Local Scout, which finds businesses in your location and tells you what there is to eat/drink, buy, and keep yourself or the kids occupied.
You can change the order results appear by prioritizing them by distance, rating, relevance, or type.
Each business receives a Quick Card, and you can select any outlet and get detailed information about it.
Please continue reading 2nd part of Windows Phone 7.5 Mango review.
No comments yet.