Getting up and Close with Windows Phone 7.5

Microsoft has coined a new tagline, 'Put People first', for the latest release of Windows Phone 7.5, code named Mango. Thankfully, this time, the mapping between the tagline and the OS is very much in sync, because the new release is like a breath of fresh air over the previous mobile editions of the OS from Microsoft. There are hundreds of new features and enhancements. The touch-based user interface, similar to rivals, iOS and Android, is a welcome change in Mango. It's quite usable, and intuitive, so even your grandmother would understand how to use it! Microsoft launched Mango on an HTC-based phone, the Radar (see box).

Glance and go

In today's connected world, users get their information from multiple streams, be it email, social networking sites, SMS, etc. Keeping track of so many streams is a challenging task. Mango has a new tiled interface known as 'Metro UI' to help you to this. Each tile represents a specific information stream, which gives you live updates on what's happening at a single glance. This doesn't only happen with existing, built-in apps, but third party ones also. Multitasking or juggling between two applications is also possible. For instance, to see what all applications you have used most recently, you simply have to hold the back button and quickly switch to the desired one.

Linked conversations

This was a much needed enhancement in Mango. Linked conversations allow you to continue your conversations across multiple apps, while maintaining the same thread of information. So if you're chatting with a friend or colleague on Facebook chat and the other person has to sign-off, you can continue to chat with the person over SMS, and yet all your conversation would be shown to you as a single thread of messages. Similarly email conversation is also grouped together. This means lesser time spent on searching reference mails.

Socializing

While using Mango you would feel much closer to your online social network and there are multiple paths through which you can post updates to Twitter and Facebook. Suppose you clicked a picture, then Mango allows you to upload your clicks from the camera menu itself. Besides native social media integration you can also form groups and communicate with this group by sending common emails, SMSs, etc.

Search and speech

Being a Microsoft product, the web search capabilities revolve around Bing. Nothing exceptional here except for the fact that you have Bing search available when needed. You can perform search in different ways: using voice commands, music search can be performed by playing a tune that the phone listens to and then shows results. Finally, one can also search using images just like Google Goggles.

Voice can also be used to make calls, or send text messages (by dictating your message to the phone). You simply have to open the application by pressing and holding the Windows button. After that, just start speaking.

Features for business users

With Mango one can hook to more than one Exchange Server, which could be beneficial to those who are working with multiple companies. Plus, you can now set an out-of-office auto responder, have alpha-numeric PIN codes, search your Exchange server for specific email and most importantly, read Information Rights Management protected messages. Support for Office 365 in Mango further adds to its usage as a business phone. Using Office 365, you can connect to Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync from a single location and with Office 365 on Mango, all these services are available to you on your fingertips. Another important edge of Mango is that it includes IE9, the new version of Microsoft browser that supports HTML5, CSS3, SV, XHTML, DOM, etc. Integration of events from Exchange and Facebook is also an added feature which would keep you updated on future activities.

'Mango' flavored HTC Radar



Microsoft and HTC came together to launch HTC's first Windows Phone 7.5 with a Mango update. The phone has a unibody design carved out of a single aluminum piece, giving the smartphone a solid feel. For those who like to use their phone as a style statement, the smartphone's white body easily satiates that need.


The smartphone has a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor and 512 MB RAM, which is not a great configuration, but is good enough to provide a really good base for the OS and apps. In fact, the phone is really responsive, even when you do multi-tasking on it. However, a sealed battery, lack of memory expansion, and only 8 GB of in-built storage might be a put-off for some people, but the overall performance despite such specs is quite satisfiying. The only thing you can add to the phone from outside is a SIM card. All this reminds us of the iPhone 3GS!


The Radar comes with a 5 MP camera with an F2.2 lens, LED flash, and BSI sensor, allowing for excellent quality pictures and videos. You can record 720p video with this phone. Plus you can customize camera settings (like ISO) according to external conditions. In fact, the phone gave great results even under low-lighting conditions.


On the software part, there are two key things to note. One is the slew of features offered by the Mango update, which is being covered separately in this article. Second is the slew of apps that HTC has packed with Mango-HTC Hub, Photo Enhancer, Connected Media, Watch, Notes, and Locations.

Environment

Coming up with a phone with right hardware and software components is only half the battle. What is increasingly becoming critical is the environment we often know by name of application store. Though the current 'Marketplace' of Windows Phone apps is not as big as those of rivals (with only around 30,000 apps), our experience with the same was very smooth. Whatever apps were there were relevant, useful, and easy to download. Downloading apps was smooth over 3G (we used Reliance 3G connectivity). Beyond the marketplace, one can also benefit from other Microsoft services like XBox Live support, voice enabled Bing search, etc.

While the hardware specs may not be very impressive, the OS looks optimized to use them. So the phone is a great buy at this price.