Microsoft Phone 7.5 Mango: New Features

Microsoft has announced that the upcoming version of Windows Phone, codenamed “Mango,” will be coming to a device near you this summer.

To keep pace with competitors advances in their respective mobile OSs, Microsoft will be adding at least 500 features to its mobile investment, and hopes to plug all the holes in the first two versions.

The improvements detailed herewon’t necessarily look or behave the same when the final ‘alpha’ version makes its official appearance in Q4; as often happens, features and UI enhancements may well be revised as Mango nears release.

Even in its pre-release version, several key features that cannot be tested; some either aren’t fully implemented or involve third-party apps that won’t be updated until closer to launch. Yet this build is surprisingly smooth for software that still has at least four months to go before it’s available for public consumption.

Key features

The original lack of certain useful features such as multitasking and copy-and-paste have been addressed. Within five months of launch, the NoDo refresh took care of copy-and-paste. 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.

First impressions

On booting the oS we are greeted by the same Metro UI we’re accustomed to — no indication is given at bootup that we have entered the wonderful world of Mango. All part of Microsoft’s ongoing approach to OS upgrades

Social network integration

Twitter and Facebook are now reaching veteran status, and now (along with LinkedIn) are reaching deep into several aspects of the OS.

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 displays a group section at the top – the ‘new’ button on the toolbar enables you to create a new contact or new group, then to 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, with each one representing a member of the group. There are icons for texting/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/the whole group, etc.

With groups you can prioritize updates, create a group of those people you want up-to-the minute updates, and normal (or even a lesser) status for those contacts who ‘can wait’. Perhaps your work colleagues can form a second tier.

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, and the individual emails can be minimised so you can scroll over the whole thing and pick the important ones or skip the lot.
This means 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 have support for 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 but he has 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 spoken to you.

Actually all sorts of speech-to-text/text-to-speech capabilities have been incorporated into Mango. The new voice recognition and dictation features can be used over the loudspeaker, Bluetooth, or other headphone set.

Multitasking

An extended press of the back button pulls up the card-view task switcher.

WebOS aficionados will find this feature familiar, 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 wil enhance “glance and go.”

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; others onclue Twitter apps

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 looks 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.

Bing Vision and Music Search

Mango adds a search toolbar to the bottom of the Start menu. Local Scout, Bing music search, and Bing vision have all been placed in the toolbar. Voice search has also been relocated there. Bing Vision is Mango’s built-in QR, barcode and tag reader; yep, it’s Google Goggles on Bing. Mango cleverly combines several types of readers into one, and further integration with third-party apps is supported. Let’s say you notice a DVD at your friend’s house and want to get your own copy. Scan the barcode with Bing Vision, and it offers to send you straight to the Amazon app to buy it or put it on your wish list. Bing music search is very similar to Shazam or SoundHound. The phone started listening as soon as we pressed the music button in Bing search, and results popped up in less than 10 seconds (slower for obscure/quiet tunes).We were shown artist, song title, and cover art, together with options to proceed to the Marketplace to buy the track. Bing Vision can also scan text (even when upside-down) and translate it into any of 26 languages.

Windows Phone Mango Multimedia and Bing Vision

Podcasts can now be downloaded direct from the Marketplace. There is full integration of podcasts into the Music + Video hub as well as the Marketplace. You can search, subscribe to, and download as much as you want – there’s even a setting to restrict downloading to WiFi zones only, to save 0n data charges. Marketplace will be available on the web, with a search option added to the bottom of the screen.

Internet browsing

Mango includes Internet Explorer 9, including full support for HTML5, CSS3, SV, XHTML, DOM, and more, but Flash is not one of the 500 magical features in Mango.

Music + Videos Hub

Smart DJ will create your own personalized music mix based on your interests, similar to the Genius feature in iTunes. Smart DJ analyses the music on your phone and creates a playlist. If you have the Zune Pass, the feature will select from the catalog in the cloud and create a mix with much more variety.

Photos and camera

The camera app now remembers your settings. You now have the option of taking pictures by tapping the screen. Auto-fix adjusts saturation, exposure, and highlights automatically.

Face recognition can now be run automatically on pictures you share on Facebook.

Office Hub

Office 365 support has been added, a set of tools made available to businesses which gives access to Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync. Mango combines all these elements into Office and let you sync with these services.
The new Locations Pane gives access to all of your document locations: Office 365, SkyDrive, and SharePoint. It sorts by the most recently used location. SkyDrive is a new feature in Office; personal or shared docs stored there can now be accessed from a pivot screen.Excel sheets now offer formulas, using the autosum icon in the toolbar, Mango seamlessly automates typing lengthy formulas.

Calendar

Mango brings added functionality to task management. The deadline for any task can be integrated into the calendar. Exchange tasks can be synced too. Facebook Events can now be directly incoroporated into your calendar, via a nw toggle switch.