My Cellphone My Terms

Upcoming WP 7.5 Phones

With the latest announcement from Microsoft on its new and improved Windows Phone 7.5  “ Mango”  OS, we wonder which of the handset makers will adopt this new platform? We do know HTC with its upcoming release of Titan and Radar cell phones will feature WP 7.5; Samsung’s Omnia W to be released in UK end of October is also slated to have Mango. However, Microsoft is still relying on Nokia to deliver its real big-time status. It is rumoured Canada will get the full suite of Nokia WP 7.5 devices (Seray, Sabre, Ace & Sun) early in 2012. Stay tuned to get release dates and best pricing on these devices but in the meantime checkout what Mango has to offer.

What Stands Out?

Windows Phone 7.5  “ Mango”  OS helps fulfill the platform’s promise of helping people focus on the tasks they want to accomplish and the information they want to receive, rather than the apps they run especially when it comes to social networking and communications. Something all Smartphone manufacturers should thrive to achieve. What stands out in Mango are the following:-

Better social networking

Twitter and LinkedIn are now supported in Mango. More important, though, is that social networking is now integrated throughout the entire operating system. A new profile pane for contacts shows your entire history of communications with the contact, including email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or text messaging. In addition, there’s a new Me tile that pulls together all of the updates and content from your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Windows Live contacts, so you can see at a glance all the updates. With a single post, you can send updates to multiple social networking sites.

Unified, threaded messaging across services

Don’t think there is anything out there to compare but we now have seamless ways of sending messages that spans multiple communications services. What this really means you can begin a chat with someone on Facebook chat and continue it via text messaging.

Bing in the spot Light

Cool new features added to Bing(Microsoft’s search engine) include:-

• Bing Vision is like a combination of the Google Goggles and Barcode Scanner Android apps. It scans bar codes, QR codes, Microsoft tags and the covers of CDs, DVDs and books; it then provides information about the object it scanned.
• Local Scout feature integrates into Bing Maps and shows a variety of local information, including places to eat, drink and shop, as well as local attractions and events.
• Also, a new music identification feature helps to identify the song being played.

Multitasking

With Mango, Windows Phone joins the other major phone platforms in allowing a form of multitasking. Apps have been better integrated into the operating system. Do a Bing search, for example, and you’ll see any related Windows Phone apps you might want to download. Tap the Music + Videos tile and swipe to the right, and you’ll see any related apps you’ve installed on your device.

Speaking of apps: Microsoft Marketplace now has about 30,000 apps. Not close to the estimated 500,000 for iOS or 250,000 for Android. But you’ll find most of the popular apps you might expect, and you now have a solid choice of many others as well.

Wi-Fi tethering:

Mango gives Windows Phone the ability to share its 3G or 4G Internet connection with up to five other devices by setting up a Wi-Fi hot spot, something that Android devices and the iPhone already offer. But if you’ve got a Windows Phone device, don’t start celebrating yet because this feature won’t work on existing devices; only new phones will have this capability.

Other Features worth mentioning:

1.    The browser is now based on Internet Explorer 9 rather than 8, and its interface has been tweaked somewhat, so that the address bar is at the bottom of the screen. It includes support for a variety of Web standards, including HTML5, has a faster JavaScript engine and uses hardware acceleration for displaying graphics.

2.    Windows Phone has always included voice commands, but you can now compose text messages and instant messages using your voice; Mango also will read text to you. But there’s nothing in Windows Phone that comes close to the new Siri feature in iOS 5, which performs complex, multistep tasks by voice alone.

3.    A new SmartDJ feature automatically creates playlists from your music collection, and there’s better Xbox Live integration so that you can do things such as track how you’ve done in various games. There are now parental controls as well.

End Result:

Most of us are probably asking ourselves how does WP 7.5 Mango stack up against Apple’s  IOS 5.0 or even Google soon to be released Ice Cream Sandwich. Will it now be a 3 man race to the finish line? It won’t be long before it all plays out.

All in all, “Mango”is a significant upgrade to Windows Phone, and it brings out even more of the platform’s strengths by, notably the way in which information is brought to you, rather than you having to go out and search for it. With Bing’s new features, and other improved functionality such as multitasking, Windows Phone is now an operating system that can make a difference to your smartphone experience.