Ten Reasons to Get Excited About Windows Phone 7 Mango
- Task Switching
- Bing
- Music Player
- Social Media
- Office Hub
- Voice-to-Text
- Apps
- SKYDrive
- XBox
- Skype
- What's the Bad News?
- Summary
Microsoft previewed the Windows Phone 7 Mango update in May and touted many new advances. Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, said there would be more than 500 new updates. That estimate may have been a bit optimistic, unless you count the software updates that run behind the scenes.
A Nielsen study released in April found that Windows phone platforms accounted for only 7% of all U.S. new smartphone sales last spring. Windows Phone 7 sales have been slower than Microsoft had hoped, but with the release of Mango, it may have a product that will turn some heads. Some of the identifiable features in Mango that may really catch your interest are addressed in the following sections.
Task Switching
By pressing and holding the handset's Back button, you will see a group of tiles of all the software that is running. The tiles show miniature screenshots of what was displayed by the app when you switched away from your current position. This is very similar to how the IPad and IPhone handle app switching.
Task Switcher will keep your last six screens in a frozen state, and if an app supports background play, such as streaming music services, you can reach its current state from task switcher, too. Even though this is not true multitasking, it does allow users to easily switch between open apps.