500 New Features In Windows Phone 7 Mango Update

Microsoft used a press conference in Paris on Tuesday to unveil a major new update for its smartphone OS.

With over 500 new features, Microsoft is hoping to make better progress in the smartphone market.  The firm showed off the new features found in WP7 Mango during an event in the French capital.

After recent announcements of a partnership with Nokia and its purchase of Skype, Microsoft promised that Mango will offer users a whole new experience.

First of all, communicating should be easier

• Text messages, IMs, Facebook messages and more are all brought together in a single inbox.
• Contacts can be grouped together on the homescreen to send an SMS or an e-mail to everybody at once.

• Twitter and LinkedIn profiles are available for all contacts without needing to use a separate app.

• Your e-mail inbox can bring all of your personal and professional e-mail accounts into one place, but also keep them apart.

• E-mails inviting you to an event are linked to your calendar.

• It's easier to share photos with other WP7 users in Mango, which also includes face recognition.

Next up: new apps

• The new Officer app syncrhonises notes with the cloud using SkyDrive, making them available from any Windows computer anywhere.

• 'Real' multitasking lets users run apps in the background and switch between them quickly without wasting any battery or impacting on the phone's performance.
• Your Xbox Live avatar is shown in 3D, and can be modified directly on your phone.  You can see your friends' profiles whether they're online or not.  Mango also allows you to send them messages, see who's playing in real time and compare their performance.  The updated OS makes your mobile an Xbox Live platform in its own right.
• Dynamic widgets no longer need to be visible on your homescreen to be updated.

New web features

• Internet Explorer 9 is built-in.
• The Bing search engine now includes Vision, Music Search and Voice options.
• Videos are no longer played back on a web page but instead launch the phone's media player.

• You can search local listings according to categories like restaurants, cinemas, and so on, based on your current position and recommendations from other users.

The deal that Microsoft recently signed with Nokia would suggest that the firm's next generation smartphones will be running Mango.  Acer, Fujitsu and ZTE have all also announced plans to use the new version of the OS, which is set to arrive in the autumn.

This video advertises the new features:


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