With 500 new features, Microsoft launches Windows Phone 7.1Mango
By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 25 May 2011, 23:35 IST
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Bangalore: Microsoft has announced that the next version of its mobile operating system, Windows Phone 7.1 will be codenamed 'Mango'. Mango not just has Office 365 and IE9 experiences but also 500 new features that includes enhanced Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn integration, hands-free messaging, a multiple email inbox and the ability to chat with friends using Facebook Chat, Windows Live Messenger and SMS in the same thread. Google has always topped the list of being innovational. The codename to the various versions of its Android OS include Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich, all of which have given Microsoft a run for its money. Microsoft's windows phone 7 could not beat the success of Android. With the launch of the new version of Windows phone OS 'Mango', Microsoft hopes to turn its fate. In this new version, Microsoft has concentrated on three focus areas - Communication, Application, Internet. In Mango, communication has been given a lot of priority that would depend more on the user rather than the applications. To put it in simple words, one can communicate seamlessly with the same person across various platforms from a single thread. This feature seems a lot like the new Messages feature of Facebook. Microsoft has further enhanced the above mentioned feature in its Group functionality to allow multiple members to seamlessly communicate across multiple platforms. Mango will have Twitter and Linkedin along with Facebook, Hotmail and Gmail in its contacts. Other social features include Facebook check-ins and Facebook's face detection for photo tagging algorithm. The voice recognition ability allows the users to send hands free messages. It also provides the user with a central inbox for all email accounts of users. The features of Mango also cater the needs of the corporate users that include the integration of Office 365 and SkyDrive. Editing and viewing of Office documents like Word and Excel. Mango comes with IE9 as its browser, which is well known for its hardware acceleration and HTML5 support. Although IE9 has not been able to make considerable ripples in the web browser market, it is by far the best browser available for mobiles. This gives Mango a major lead compared to its competitors in terms of browsing experience. Also there is an Xbox Live integration that allows users to bring in their gaming experiences to a mobile platform. The Mango experience will also include multitasking and better cloud integration. Microsoft will not only push out Mango on devices manufactured by partner Nokia but, has entered into partnerships with Acer, Fujitsu and ZTE to build the devices. LG, HTC and Samsung, the old partners of Microsoft will also build devices to run on Mango. It is too early to speculate whether Mango would be able turn the fate of Microsoft but, it does seem like a commendable competitor of Android and iOS from what we have heard till now. Nokia devices running on Mango are already in the making and can be expected to be revealed later this year.

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