FINALLY! Looking at the development of Windows Phone has been quite impressive. Being the latest to ship a new version of their OS they have been adding features and improving at a rate much faster than competitors.
This is not only true for features like Copy/Paste and Multitasking which took quite awhile to come for iOS&Android, but for the app store as well. The growth of apps in the marketplace is explosive, growing at a faster rate at any of the other competitors at similar times in the product life cycle. They also recently hit 13,000 apps.
Adding to that we get a glimpse of what to expect from Mango. They are adding:
- As we all know background, full-fledged multitasking which means we can finally multi-task on Windows Phone 7…which is welcome if anyone has ever needed to use Flory for Google Talk and various other activitiies
- Fast app-switching – similar to the Palm Pre cards, I hope the build on that and allow the USER to decide which app to close/remain open as opposed to the system doing it for you
- FINALLY file transfers ! Which means we can transfer audio and files via Bluetooth, which was a severely lacking feature. Coming from Symbian/Meego this is very welcome.
- Deeper phone integration for apps allowing them to leverage app tiles
- Access to hardware for developers like camera etc.
All these features are frankly very welcome and illustrate the effort Microsoft is putting into Windows Phone to ensure it remains competitive. I am sure the partnership with Nokia gave them the kick in the pants they needed to ensure that they live up to maintaining the platform, and ensuring that Nokia users can easily make the switch without feeling the obvious lack in features. I believe they are heading in the right direction, it is not just a ‘pretty’ UI anymore once these features are added, and at the end of the day they have huge resources to ensure that they will be relevant again in this space.
Will upload MOREof ‘Mango’, so stay tuned all !
Update 1: Other features expected are ring tone setting, phone app-search so you don’t have to scroll through a huge list (shown below), smart multitasking which confirms that the phone will manage if enough memory is there, and ANGRY BIRDS, SPOTIFY and SKYPE coming. Angry birds coming on the 25th of May.
Update 2: There seemed to be some awesome integration with apps and hardware given the new access developers have. Showcased an Amazon application which allows bar code scanning right in the app, and the ability to pin this specific function as a tile. Pretty cool.
Check the pictures below:
The Nokia Ecosystem 
