Windows Phone “Mango” Is Done

Or, more correctly, it has been release to manufacturing (RTM’d) – ie the development team have signed off the final build and that build is now in the hands of handset manufacturers and mobile operators.

The final build number is 7720 (those of you running the beta build are running 7661). We’re still waiting on news as to how developers can get early access to the final build for testing purposes. Stay tuned for more info.

Terry listed some of his favourite Mango features. If it’s good enough for him it’s good enough for me. Here are a few of mine:

• Email “conversation view”. I’m so used to it in Outlook that being without it was like having one arm tied behind your back
• Not having to enter my PIN code *every* time I wake the phone. We have a company-wide PIN lock policy enforced when you sync with our Exchange server. On Windows Phone 7 that means entering the PIN every you go beyond the lock screen. On Mango, there’s a timeout period during which you don’t have to re-enter the PIN. This one small change has a big impact on “user friendliness”.
• App installation is much more intuitive – you see the download progress “in situ”
• Marketplace search delivers separate results for apps and music
• IE9 of course

 

And that’s just end user features – there’s even more in there from a developer’s perspective.

What are your favourite features?

Comments

• Anonymous
  July 26, 2011
  Really love the new bing search features - QR Codes, MS Tag, Text Recognition and Translation, Speech Search, Music, Nearby Places.

• Anonymous
  July 26, 2011
  One little known feature I stumbled across is to do with the zune player. I like how the player displays artist pictures, however if you go to "lock+wallpaper" in the settings, you can set it to show the artist pictures as your wallpaper - the wallpaper will then change as you change artists. Also the updated Bluetooth settings allow the song/artist names to be shown on compatible Bluetooth devices (such as my car radio). And the enhanced playback controls on the lock screen certainly deserve mention. My other favourites include turning off the camera shutter sound and remembering your camera settings. And the other feature I enjoy is that search results open in the current IE tab - before it always used to open a new tab.

• Anonymous
  July 27, 2011
  The comment has been removed