Can’t get enough of Windows Phone 7 Mango ? I just came back from the Paris unveiling event with quite a bit of info regarding the first major update of Microsoft’s mobile OS. First let me start by pointing out to the previous Mango post I did about the new APIs and Developer related features here and here. Today’s preview will mainly focus on the consumer experience and some other bits of info that you may have not heard of before.
There’s obviously not much to say that already hasn’t been said earlier and even shown in official videos. The first question on everybody’s mind is most probably: When is Mango going to be released? Well the official answer is this Autumn but from what I’ve been told there won’t be a official launch day similar to what was done last year with Windows Phone 7. Instead, OEMs will start launching their devices when they are ready. This essentially means that once Mango is RTM and certified by carriers, manufacturers will integrate the gold code into their upcoming phones and start shipping them once they are ready. There will be a steady release of Mango handsets throughout the fall season and holidays.
The second question is: Was there any new handset announced? Well, contrary to what some rumors suggested not a single handset was shown or announced. Fujitsu/Toshiba, Acer and ZTE are now on board of the Windows Phone train though. In the case of Fujitsu-Toshiba their first handsets will most probably launch exclusively in Japan at first ( nothing is set in stone though, discussions are still underway). HTC is expected to launch 2 (or 3) phones , most probably the Ignite and Prime and Samsung is currently working on a “Hero” handset (high-end WP7 model). Microsoft already has working Nokia prototypes but there was nothing to show today.
Mango is packed with stubble changes that have not been talked about yet. For example the search button will now always open Bing search. Microsoft has now added a search icon in the application bar (or simply a search icon on the lower left of the screen) that will give the user the ability to search within an native app (contacts,people hub, marketplace etc..).Speaking of the People Hub, it seems like Microsoft finally fixed what I have been complaining about all along: all the sms/email/etc conversation history is now included in each contact card. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to test if tapping on a mail now logically opens the phone’s email client or still stupidly opens the browser and navigates to hotmail.com (but I think that it works like a should, fingers crossed).
The messaging app now includes SMS, MMS, Messenger, Facebook chat (and LinkedIn and Viadeo in the near future). There’s one thing I forgot to check though: sending videos by email or MMS. Sorry for that but I really forgot about this. Speech to text and Text to speech is also fully functional for Messenger and SMS but I was unable to see the Twitter integration which was apparently not yet functional in the builds. The Messenger integration is a dream come true for all of us users who have been complaining about its omission from the current version of the OS ( It wasn’t a priority feature at the time and the OS didn’t have the necessary functionality to make it possible). You will finally be able to chat with you friends, family (yes even group chat is supported) via SMS, Messenger and Facebook all seamlessly integrated into one single thread. Messenger emoticons and MPOP (multiple points of presence) are also supported.
Microsoft has also tweaked the UI all across the OS to point at things that probably went unnoticed before by some users. For example there’s a new arrow in the camera app in the lower left of the viewfinder to indicate that you can swipe to access the camera roll. The camera will now remember your settings (finally!).
The picture hub also received some UI changes. As you can see in the picture below you now have direct access to the camera roll and a new People pane has been added. This new pane gives you access to people/groups photo albums create on Facebook or Skydrive. User now also have the ability to tag people in the photos then upload them to Facebook etc..
Microsoft has also added an auto-fix feature that seems to tweaked the pictures contrast, sharpness similar to what was demoed by Microsoft Research a couple of weeks ago.
The new Office hub now gives users access to the Office documents hosted on their personal Skydrives, Office 365 and Exchange servers. PDF are can also be uploaded / downloaded but the Adobe PDF reader application will be needed to open them. Tasks are now also supported in the the OS.
Now let’s talk about Bing. As you probably already know three new services have been added in Mango: Bing Vision, Bing Audio (music search) and Local Scout. What you want to know now is if those nice features work outside of the US. Well, officially Bing Vision should work in the US, UK and France. Bing Audio will work in the US, UK , France, Italy, Germany and Spain. Local Scout should be available in the US, UK and France. I know that the official Windows Phone site says that Local Scout only works in the US and UK but I was able to confirm that it works in France too (I saw it running on a phone running in French and another one in English) with the use of the Page Jaunes POIs launched last month. BTW, the sudden lack of business reviews in Bing a few days ago was caused by updates to the service in preparation of Mango. Everything isn’t fully up and running yet and I was told that a new build and service update is expected between June 1st and June 6 and this is when MS will start talking about Turn-by-Turn Navigation, Music Search Twitter etc. Update: The Quick Cards results in Bing are currently only available in the US. Quick cards are for example: Movie Showtimes, product reviews, indoor maps etc..
IE9 Mobile works as expected but I’m still not a fan of the new URL bar and the fact that I now have an additional tap to access the favorites, tabs etc. Oddly enough Javascript support was still busted in this build. If you haven’t noticed yet, since NoDo IE Mobile no longer display some JS content, most notably ads. As you will see in the video below the current IE Mobile version leaves a blank space in placeof the ads while IE9 Mobile renders an error message in place of the JS content.
Multi-Tasking worked like a breeze and there was no performance hit at all. Early WP7 adopters will now have to drop the bad habit of constantly re-opening applications after exiting them and instead remember that long pressing the back button is now the way to go.
The device’s lock screen also changes based on the song / artist being played.You will also notice that the player controls are now fully embedded on the top left of the screen (they no longer auto-hide after 5 seconds).
Here’s a short video of some of the features in action (sorry no sound cause it was really noisy in there..):
There’s undoubtedly a lot more features to talk about but I think that’s there’s already enough material already posted about them so just hit the Mango tag to check them all out. If you have any questions just ask them below or Follow @MobileTechWorld and check out the full list of new Mango features here.
. Remember that Mango’s success will also depend on the marketing push that Microsoft is willing to put behind it.
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