Mango tastes sooo gooood!

By: Dave Lee
Associate Editor

I have recently had the opportunity to test out Windows Phone 7 Mango Beta 2 on my Samsung Focus device. All I can say is WOW. Everything they have bundled out of the box for this new OS is quite impressive! Let me start off with just a couple things that I have noticed right off the bat….

Speed of the Operating System

With the NoDO update, it really did speed up the operating system. Working in and out of apps was improved greatly. With Mango, its even faster. Moving from one app to another is extremely fast. I have noticed that its so fast that the phone doesn’t seem to keep up. The “flow” of the files moving in and out of applications seem choppy. Remember this is a beta, so I’ll be patient and see how that is resolved in the next build. Moving around the Tiles on the home screen is smoother and it seems to snap in better. You will know what I mean when you use it.. hard to explain in text :)

Music+Videos / Zune

The Play button menu and toast area are a lot larger making it easier to change tracks, etc.
Podcasts have been added. You can now browse the Marketplace for podcasts and subscribe. Great feature… by the way… check out the podcast I’m on, Waves of Tech on this very website ;-)
Radio is now available. You can tune into your favorite radio station if you choose to do so.
SmartDJ. You pick your favorite artist or song and it will build a playlist based off that style of music
Favorite, repeat, and random buttons on the left of the album art

Bing

This is one of my favorite area of changes. Microsoft really rocked this one out. Lets start off with Local Scout…..

Local Scout

Local Scout offers location specific results. If you are in an area that you are not familiar with, its easy to find places to go. This is a great addition that I know I will use very often. When you open Local Scout it grabs your location and displays results in the following manner:

eat+drink – This provides you with a list of restaurants or locations where you can grab a beverage. VERY COOL
see+do – This provies you with a list of events and attractions based on your location.
shop – This provides you with a list of shops, Grocers, supermarkets, etc.

When you find a place to eat, see, or shop you can pull up the information for that particular place. You can then get the address, phone, etc. The best part is when you want to get there and you don’t know how…. tap directions and it shouldn’t be too hard to get there :) Now I have no need for Food-spotting or Yelp.

Music

Need to know what song is on the radio? No need for Shazaam anymore. Simply tap “Music” and it will identify the tune. Once it has been identified you can go to the Marketplace to purchase or listen to it.

Vision

With Bing Vision you have the ability to scan bar-codes, QR Codes, Microsoft Tags, books, CD’s, and DVD’s. It then displays information, reviews, pricing of what was scanned. Oh, it also does language translation.

Images

Its about time! You can now get image searches in Bing. I’ve been waiting for that :)
Voice
You can search by voice in Bing. Simply tap the button, speak what you want to search for and boom! It works pretty darn well.

Maps – Added voice to GPS

Maps have always given you the ability to grab your location and get directions to your destination… however, it was missing voice from this feature. There are plenty of apps in the Marketplace that will give you this ability, but they range from 20-50 dollars. Now, its built in. It is still a bit buggy, but seems to work pretty well. Steve and I were driving from a clients location and I decided to test it. Couple things I’ve noticed.

Sometimes the voice can be delayed. This could be a pain if you are doing really quick left/right turns.
It provided me with a route that we didn’t particularly want to take… we turned left and the voice told us we are off track. ”Tap the screen to get updated route information”. It worked really well.

Facebook / Twitter Integration

Twitter

The twitter integration isn’t complete yet in Mango. I hope the next beta will provide the ability to use it. Its going to function simliar to how the Facebook integration currently works. I’m a twitter addict, so this is important to me. For the time being I recommend “Rowi”. You can get that here.

Facebook

I like the changes they have done here. Things I have noticed:

Notifications have been added to your “ME” hub. This is awesome! This gave me the ability to remove the secondary Facebook application and stick to the integration built into the operating system. This also displays the notifications on the live tile.
Events are now added into your calendar.
Facebook Chat
The ability to Check-in

Great additions if you are a Facebook addict.

Linked Mailbox / Email threading

This feature is self explanatory. This gives you the ability to link many mailboxes into one. This helped me clean up my tiles and give me the ability see all my email in one view.

Email now has threading messages. Very clean and easy to manage your “conversations” via email.

People Hub

People Hub now gives you the ability to create groups. I created a Family group and add all my family contacts. This gives you the ability to access them in one location. I love this feature. What can you do with groups?