Windows Phone Mango

[Animalor]

So I bought a Windows Phone back in June because I had been highly interested in the platform and the right price/plan came along from a carrier (free phone on a 1 year contract with Bell Mobility in Canada).

I've been running the leaked RTM version of the latest Mango update on my phone for the last 2-3 weeks now and I havta say that the phone went from good to great.

Some of the high points of the device that I really like are:

People Hub
All your contacts from all your integrated services show up in one list under People. Same person in multiple services, it does a great job as automatically linking them. I had to do minimal fixing of the links. It shows all the information for all services under one holistic view. You can post to Facebook, Tweet, call, e-mail etc. One swipe to the left will show you all the updates from everyone in your list from all integrated social networks. Selecting a person in people and swiping to the left will show you all updates from that single person.

Up until Mango, you could pin a contact directly to your home screen and use that as a quick contact. In Mango, you can create groups of individuals and then use that to e-mail all of them (it allows you to select a main e-mail address for each person if you have multiple e-mails), or send group SMS messages. A swipe to the left will show you social updates for everyone in that particular group.

Messaging – In Mango, they’ve turned this from the SMS app to a full on messenging app. You can do SMS and MMS still but you can also do windows Live Messenger and Facebook chat from within this. Works great.

Me tile – You have a tile on the home screen that contains everything you have posted to social networks. Prior to Mango, this was of limited use. In Mango however whenever someone reacts to something you’re done on any integrated service, you get notifications of that here.

Multi-Tasking and Fast-Resume – This is in now and works very well. The biggest problem with Fast Resume is that it requires the devs to recompile and update their app with the latest version of the SDK. Until the carriers ok the update and Microsoft starts deploying, there won’t be a ton of devs updating just yet. For the few apps that have updated though, it’s very smooth.

Games/Xbox Live – Achievements, on your phone. Not much more to add here. The non XBL games are also starting to get quite good.
Browser –Tthere has been a serious update done to the browser and it’s not a mobile version of the HTML 5 compliant IE9. It’s much better/faster than the NoDo version however there is still the issue that a lot of websites aren’t looking for this browser string yet and we’re getting a lot of un-optimized sites. iOS version of Google Reader works great.

Voice Commands – Mango has some really good voice recognition built in. When on Bluetooth in a car for example, you can have the phone read you incoming SMS and reply using only voice. I’ve tested it while driving and it’s really good. You can also open apps, do searches and make calls.

Bing Services –
This is a great run through of Local Scout, Voice search, optical search of books and media etc.
There's a ton of really cool stuff here, all of which that works in Canada once I changed the browser region to US english.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgQUgZEi ... 1843522016

My only real disappointment is the Video and Music hub and the media player that I consider somewhat feature-poor. (Actually, the only thing I’m really missing is 1.5x playback for podcasts).

Overall a solid upgrade that brings the phone on-par with other platforms and exceeds other on quite a few fronts. The App Marketplace crested 30k apps late last week (slightly slower than Apple to the milestone but a lot faster than Google did) and there is rapidly growing dev interest apparently.

I personally prefer using this OS over iOS on my iPod Touch and webOS. I've never used Android in any real capacity so I can't make any judgement on it.

[Boogahz]

I've heard good things about these phones, but I haven't had any chance to actually use one. Weren't there issues with the platform being dumped before, or were they limited to a certain manufacturer?

[miir]

Weren't there issues with the platform being dumped before, or were they limited to a certain manufacturer?

I believe you're thinking of the Microsoft Kin

[Boogahz]

That would be what I was thinking of.


I have gone without a mobile phone for several years now. If/when I move back to one, I would be getting rid of my Vonage service at home at the same time. The problem has been the deadzone I am in. 8 towers nearby, and I could barely get 2 bars if I were at home.

[Winnow]

Here's a video comparing iOS 5 and Windows 8 on Tablets:

http://youtu.be/ntSdfGzF60M?hd=1

It's not a great comparison but gives you some idea of what Windows 8 on touch devices will be like. Looks like Windows 8 could quickly replace Android as a worthy contender to iOS.

[Animalor]

I'm posting this message from the Windows 8 Dev preview using the Metro version of the browser. Even on a non-tablet, this UI works pretty well and having the full desktop in the background is a huge bonus.

The OS is still a year out though and it shows. Having it out in the public will give MS some invaluable information on that people want and don't want.

[Aabidano]

...don't want.

The reviled ribbon for one thing. I can't imagine what they're thinking.

[miir]

Mango (7.5) coming in 2 weeks I hear.

[Aslanna]

Unfortunately the ribbon bar wont be going away anytime soon. MS really likes it and thinks it makes people more productive. Maybe new users who use it from the get-go but I find it frustrating when trying to do anything that I'm already used to do other ways. Hate the ribbon!