Though the IE9-based browser is essentially the same since our preview, I wanted to circle back and talk about it a bit. You can load up to six tabs at a time, seemingly with no hit on performance on each tab - scroll and zoom performance remained pitch-perfect throughout.
Put simply, I love Live Tiles, and Mango finally takes them to where they need to be. All of the apps I tested implemented Live Tiles, meaning you get something more than a static icon when you pin the app to the home screen; frankly, half the fun of it was seeing in what creative way each app used its Live Tile space. Foursquare, for instance, shows your position in your leaderboard, while Allrecipes teases a featured recipe that changes daily.
Ultimately, I think a high level of configurability within each app is going to be important - everyone has a different idea of what they want to see on their home screen - but I was fascinated to see what these developers have done on their first pass.
Multitasking works well, particularly in Mango apps. Accessing the multitasking screen can be inconsistent. When you select it from the multitasking screen, a properly-implemented Mango app will immediately resume right where you left it.
Windows Phone remains a breath of fresh air in an otherwise-entrenched mobile landscape. Sure, this is just a mild evolution of a platform that launched a year ago, but Microsoft has evolved it in all of the most important ways. There are still problems, of course — Mango is far from perfect — but this is the first version of Windows Phone that I can recommend without an asterisk. It uses a card interface to switch between apps, very similar to what we've seen in WebOS.
Messaging is done on threads, combining various services - within a single conversation you can switch between SMS, Facebook chat and Windows Live Messenger seamlessly.
Now that's new. We like innovation like that though the actual implementation by the users will be tricky, that's for sure. Other messaging changes promise you will be able to dictate your messages or have an incoming text read to you, thanks to the text-to-speech and speech-to-text features.
Twitter and LinkedIn has joined the social networking prowess of Windows Phone too and Facebook check-in functionality as well as face tagging in photos are built-in. You can pin whole groups of people as live tiles and monitor updates from people in the group or message the whole group right from your Start screen. Live tiles are improved in general - they will display much more info than their v7. App connect helps third-party apps integrate into the Hubs of Windows Phone 7.
Apps will also be included in search results, making search in Mango much more context aware and hopefully useful. Check out our coverage on the new search features here.
You can quickly switch among recently used applications by pressing and holding the back button. All of your open apps are elegantly displayed in chronological order based on when you last used them. In Mango, all of the hubs have been enhanced with some sweet new features. The Picture Hub now has a tagging system, making it easier for you to organize your photos. When you share your photos on Facebook or SkyDrive, the Photo Hub will automatically detect any photo of a person and ask whether you want to tag it.
YouTube, Last. This has been a feature of the Zune desktop software for quite some time—and a welcome addition to Windows Phone 7. Microsoft is aiming to make Windows Phone the phone for business customers. Windows Phone 7 owners will be able to save and share Office documents through Office and Windows Live SkyDrive, ensuring them access to the latest documents when and where needed. One nice upgrade: You can now pin any Microsoft Office document—such as a PowerPoint presentation or an Excel spreadsheet—to your Start screen.
Contact groups in Mango. Live Tiles—the always-updating widgets that you can customize and rearrange on your homescreen—will have more real-time information in Mango. You can view notifications, such as Facebook messages or Tweet replies, in a single place. And of course, you can pin your own tile to your Start screen for quick access. Like the other Live Tiles, the new Me tile will display more information—for instance, indicating when you have a missed call or a new text message.
In Mango, you can group your contacts together by how they relate to your life—family, friends, coworkers, frenemies, and the like.
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