Windows Phone 7.5 Mango in-depth preview (video)
Make no mistake, Microsoft isn't playing coy in the smartphone market any longer. The folks in Redmond are making a significant jump forward in the mobile arena, announcing that the upcoming version of Windows Phone, codenamed "Mango," will be heading to a device near you in time for the holidays. As its competitors have raised the bar of expectations to a much higher level, Microsoft followed suit by adding at least 500 features to its mobile investment, which the company hopes will plug all of the gaping holes the first two versions left open.
We received a Samsung Focus preloaded with the most recent developer build (read: not even close to the market release version) and we had a few good days to put it through its paces. It's still far from completion, as there were several key features that we couldn't test out; some weren't fully implemented, and others involved third-party apps that won't be updated until closer to launch. Yet we don't want to call this build half-baked -- in fact, it was surprisingly smooth for software that still has at least four months to go before it's available for public consumption.
At the risk of sounding ridiculously obvious, we're mighty interested in seeing the final result when all is said and done this holiday season. As a disclaimer, we can't guarantee that the stuff we cover here will actually look or act the same when it's ready to peek out and make its official introduction in Q4; as often happens, features and UI enhancements are subject to be changed by the Windows Phone team as Mango gets closer and closer to release. Let's get straight to brass tacks, since there's a lot of details to dive into. It'd be best to grab a large beverage (we'd recommend a Big Gulp, at least), find your most comfortable chair, and meet us after the break.
Table of Contents
Key features
Social network integration
Email and messaging
Multitasking
Maps
Bing Vision and Music Search
Marketplace
Internet browsing
Music+Video Hub
Photos and camera
Office Hub
Games Hub
Calendar
Other changes in Mango
New or changed settings
What's missing
Wrap-up
Key features | Return to top |
First impressions
When we first booted up the OS, we were greeted by the same Metro UI we've been accustomed to -- there were absolutely no revelations given at bootup that this was a Mango device. We even went into settings just to make absolutely sure we weren't sent an old Focus by mistake, and it was indeed running OS 7.5. As Microsoft is primarily focused on filling the gaps in its existing user interface rather than completely turning everything upside-down, we didn't have to take extra time to figure out where everything was at. It wasn't until we got inside and looked around that we realized that even though we were in the same house, a lot of the furniture had been moved around, the basement's finished, and a shiny new chandelier was hanging from the ceiling.
Social network integration | Return to top |
Twitter and Facebook have blessed (or cursed, if your best friend discovered Mafia Wars and needs points) our lives for several years, and now these services (along with LinkedIn) are diving pretty deep into several aspects of the OS.
The Me hub lets you check in to Facebook Places, post messages, and see your notifications.
Microsoft gave the Me hub more purpose in Mango. Current Windows Phones don't put much emphasis on this particular tile -- it's basically your Facebook Wall and little else -- but Mango is cranking up the Facebook integration a notch. First, the live tile has been given more meaning now, offering up status updates, IMs, check-ins, comments, and other notifications directly on the tile, lending more credence to the company's "glance and go" mantra. The page shown upon entering the hub will display your latest status update, profile picture (also seen on the live tile), and three options: post a message, check in, and set chat status. A swipe to the right brings up the same "what's new" page present in the previous iteration of Me; repeat the same gesture and you'll find your Facebook notifications.
Twitter integration will be tight as well, though we didn't get to try it out.
We love Twitter correspondence, so you can imagine our excitement upon hearing Mango will have bring more integration with the social networking service. Sadly, we weren't able to take advantage of the feature on this build -- the functionality still resides on an internal server and couldn't be ported onto our seed devices yet -- but we'll see it come into play just as much as Facebook does, embedded within the Me, People, and Pictures Hubs.
You may now create groups.
One of our favorite additions to the Windows Phone mold is group functionality. It's the difference maker in the People Hub now, which was largely unaffected by the update otherwise. The "all" pivot screen, once just a list of all your contacts, now throws a group section on the top. Obviously you won't see any groups by default, because you'll need to put those in yourself. It's easy to add these in just by hitting the "new" button on the bottom toolbar. It then prompts you to add either a new contact or new group, then choosing a name. Pass through this screen, and you get the opportunity to start choosing members.
Once you've created a group, you can access a special hub for it. There's three pivot screens in this hub. In the first one, "group," you'll find a set of live tiles (much akin to the Start menu), with each one representing a member of your group. We're told these tiles will be dynamically updated with each individual's Facebook and / or Twitter statuses, but we couldn't get it to work in this build. Underneath the live tiles will be options to text or email your group. Now here's where it starts to get a little interesting: you may create a group in which not all members will have an email address or a phone number (they may just have one or the other). In this case, you'll be informed that not every person in the group will be receiving the text or email -- instead, it will just say "x of x members."
Within the group hub, the "what's new" pivot will aggregate the status updates, picture uploads, and other comments related to members of that group; it's easy to "like" or comment on someone's status directly from this pivot. Finally, the "pictures" pivot is exactly how it sounds -- you'll have the opportunity to see photos related to everyone in the group. It's broken down into two sections: you can choose to view all of the images pulled together into one album, or select an individual member to see only their albums. If you have a large group, you may be discouraged when you try to look at the photos of the group all together since there's no way to filter them. You just get all of the pictures in one large tray.
After playing with groups for a couple days, we discovered a hidden gem that may not be completely obvious when you first start using the feature. One frustration we have when looking at our normal Facebook news feed is that there's no easy way to filter out entries by priority. Let's face it -- status updates from your family and best friends are much more important to you than having to see what your old high school buddy from 20 years ago is up to. To make matters worse, those less important updates are burying the ones you actually care to read. Groups in Mango has the solution: make a group comprising those friends or family members you want to keep up with on Facebook. Pin that group to your start menu, and you can bypass all of the junk updates you don't care about.
You can pin each group (and contact) to your Start menu.
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