Microsoft Windows Phone 7.5 'Mango'

Microsoft Windows Phone 7.5, otherwise known as "Mango," is sweet. It's full of people-centric features that make it easier to stay in touch with friends and family, to communicate, and to share ideas. It's easier to use than Android, and in many ways slicker than Apple's iOS. But since it doesn't support most forms of 4G or the latest hardware, it may not get the phones or promotion it deserves.

Mango brings dozens, if not hundreds, of new features to Windows Phone. It has a much better browser, limited multitasking, Twitter and LinkedIn integration, a terrific interface for creating ad-hoc groups of friends, better ways for apps to give you useful information, the option for Wi-Fi hotspot mode and much more. This is a major update.

For a rundown of the basic features of the OS, check out our . Microsoft said Mango will appear on every existing Windows Phone, pending wireless carrier approval. have been announced for the fall, including two from HTC and two from Samsung. Nokia is anticipated to announce its first Mango-powered phones on October 25.

The Best Tastes of Mango
Windows Phone 7 has always been activity-centered rather than app-centered. Its hubs let you focus on ideas like "people," "pictures" or "music" rather than about which particular app or service you need at the moment.

My favorite new Mango feature is the new Groups option in the People hub. With Facebook and Twitter added to your phone book, you're probably going to have a lot of contacts. Groups help you make sense of them.

I don't use Facebook because I find it overwhelming. With my account stuffed full of acquaintances, everyone I went to school with, and people from work, my news feed is a massive flow of data from people I hardly know.

Windows Phone Mango makes me want to use Facebook again. I set up a Family group and saw only the updates and photo albums from my family; a Work group showed only updates and photo albums from colleagues. We move in multiple circles, and Mango lets your phone reflect that.

Facebook pops up everywhere in this OS. You can take a picture by pressing the camera button straight from the lock screen, auto-tag it with names, and share it on Facebook. The Calendar absorbs Facebook events, complete with their walls and commentary. The photo gallery lets you immediately dip into your friends' Facebook galleries. The SMS program includes Facebook Chat. It's safe to say Mango is the most Facebook-oriented OS available in the U.S.

But Mango isn't just about Facebook. Mango now combines Twitter and LinkedIn onto your contact cards and into the People hub's activity list as well, and there's an excellent third-party LinkedIn app called "In+" which can use the new live tile and deep linking functions to put LinkedIn contacts on your home screen.

Those deep-linked, live tiles are the second great thing about Mango. Windows Phone's single, scrolling home screen is made up of block-like tiles you can add, delete or rearrange. Those tiles can now include content from third-party apps, like an individual LinkedIn connection, a mobile boarding pass or a movie profile. And the tiles update dynamically, so you can see when you have new articles in your RSS reader, for instance. The approach takes some of the best of Android's widget idea, but makes it much easier to use.

Web and Performance
The new IE9 browser brings Windows Phone up to par with the latest browsers on other platforms. It still doesn't support Flash, but it handles HTML5 and has solid performance. I ran the Browsermark, Sunspider and Guimark 3 benchmarks to test the browser. A phone running Windows Phone 7 couldn't even complete Sunspider or Guimark 3. The same phone with Mango ran Browsermark four times as fast as the previous OS version.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, the latest Android 2.3 phones and BlackBerry 7 phones run both Browsermark and Sunspider even faster. Even the HTC EVO 4G, a phone using the same application processor as the Focus, got a 31133 on Browsermark compared to the Mango phone's 22155. And while Mango's browser was easy to navigate, including making it easy to click on small links, some complex pages such as an Expedia.com booking page simply didn't load.

More screens also now work in landscape mode, which is critical on sliding-keyboard phones like the and . Parts of the People hub rotate, for instance. The Maps app and many main menus stayed stubbornly in portrait, though.

I used the WP Bench benchmark to check Mango's performance on two Samsung Focus phones, one with and one without Mango. Mango improved the phone's overall performance score from 48.92 to 61.94, speeding up both CPU and memory access tasks. In my personal experience, screens flipped more quickly, applications loaded more quickly and they displayed data more quickly. It's faster all around.

Mango Apps and Multitasking
Mango brings multitasking to Windows phone, but Mango's multitasking is mixed. Hold down the phone's Back button, and you can switch between the last five apps you used. That's easy and clear, but apps need to be Mango-compatible to take advantage of it. Some apps, such as Bejeweled and Glyder, actually relaunch themselves when you try to switch back and forth. Others manage to pick up where you left off. A very few, such as the Google Reader client gReadie, can update data in the background and display it on their live tiles.

Multitasking brings up the question of third-party apps, another bright spot here. Windows Phone already has about 30,000 apps in its marketplace, which is easy to browse and use. You can find apps on the phone, through the Zune client on PCs, through a Web-based interface, or through other apps and features suggesting apps they'd work well with (a very neat trick.) Microsoft curates its store, so you won't find the free-for-all you get on Android. Most software categories are pretty well represented, but games are a specialty. Many games tie into Xbox Live, letting you get gamer points and achievements. This is part of why our readers picked Windows Phone as the best mobile OS for gaming in our earlier this year.

In terms of the built-in apps, Email and office tasks have both received a bit of a bump. You can merge multiple mailboxes and calendars into one view, or break out individual folders into different home screen tiles. There's a useful conversation view in email, and you can more easily start new calendar entries by typing directly into a calendar line. The Microsoft Office apps now automatically connect to Skydrive, which gives you a decent way to get files onto your phone. You still can't drag and drop files from a local PC, which is frustrating.

Bing Vision is a Google Goggles clone, letting you search for objects by scanning barcodes to return Web and shopping results, or translating text between languages. It doesn't work that well. It couldn't read the barcode on my Samsung Focus box. The barcode on a video game box led to the sales page on a shady retail site I'd never heard of. A shot of a DVD led to a great product "card" with details and sales pages; that kind of result just needs to be more consistent.

The new voice-to-text features are flashy, though I'd prefer if they went further. You can dictate text messages and search for items on the Web using voice commands, and it takes that voice input from a Bluetooth headset - great! I'd like it even more if you didn't have to periodically press on-screen buttons as part of the process.

There are many more features, far too many to list here. It's easier to shuffle all of your music, to download podcasts, and to watch videos in full screen. It's easier to jump to specific apps in a long list. There's more Xbox Live integration. You can use custom ringtones and visual voicemail. Even the phone's volume indicator is clearer. Pretty much everything has been improved, at least a little.

What's Not So Ripe
Unfortunately, Microsoft's hardware spec is behind the times, which will prevent Mango from getting much traction. The OS doesn't support LTE or WiMAX, which means that neither Verizon nor Sprint will promote it with enthusiasm. It doesn't support dual-core processors, the current state of the art, or the latest GPUs. And it only allows an 800-by-480 screen resolution.

The lack of network support means that the Internet will feel slower on Windows Phones than on competing 4G Android devices, while limited GPU support may hold game developers back. Mango also only supports Qualcomm S2 processors (not even Qualcomm's faster S3 models); Nvidia has said that it wants to help build Windows phones, but the company has been rebuffed so far. It blows my mind that Microsoft is actually rejecting world-class hardware partners.

The result of these restrictions is that you're going to see a lot of midrange to high-midrange smartphones running Mango. The OEMs are trying; new phones from Samsung and HTC clock the single-core S2 processor up to 1.5Ghz and use huge displays, for instance. But without a breathtaking flagship phone, it may be hard for Windows Phone to gain mindshare that would drive shoppers into stores to pick up the midrange models.

The new Bing "Local Scout" function is embarrassingly bad. It's supposed to give you an ad-hoc guide to your surroundings with places to shop, eat, and entertain yourself. But the results are just wrong. I tested Local Scout in several New York City neighborhoods and was told that a dog spa is a "highlight" of midtown Manhattan, that I should "see and do" several things about 30 miles away in New Jersey, and that the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a "highlight" of Jackson Heights, Queens (it isn't in Queens.) Microsoft said it is working on the results.

I'm frankly not sure whether Mango has solved Windows Phone's problems with landscape orientation, which is a major issue on sliding-keyboard devices like the ($99, 3.5 stars) for Sprint. Many screens now appear to work in landscape mode, but key elements including the home screen, dialer, People Hub, Games Hub, and Local Scout were still portrait-only on the Samsung Focus I was using to test the OS. As the Focus is a portrait-centric device, I'm going to withhold judgement here until I see the OS on something that's more landscape-centric.

It's Not The Software, It's Hardware and Sales
Mango is better at group messaging and social networks than iOS or (stock) Android, better at gaming than Android or BlackBerry, and customizable in visually delightful ways.

Windows Phone 7 takes a genuinely different approach to communication than its main rivals. The iPhone is a box of siloed apps, although Game Center and iOS 5's Twitter integration blur things a bit. Android tries to be everything to everyone and ends up without a coherent story. BlackBerry still starts from email and SMS and works outward from there. Windows Phone's "hubs" require some re-learning from iPhone users especially, but they're worth the effort.

But Windows Phone 7 has been a strong OS since it was released last year, and our show that the people who buy it, love it. Windows Phone's problems include a mediocre hardware spec that is neither budget-friendly nor cutting-edge, carrier salespeople who , and a marketing team that seems about the slow sales.

Mango is a world-class operating system, and I think many people, especially smartphone newcomers, would prefer it to market leader Android and to the declining BlackBerry OS. This OS would have been rated four stars if it supported LTE and WiMAX, which Verizon and Sprint are demanding from their flagship phones. Now Microsoft needs to focus on the other aspects of the phone experience—hardware, marketing and sales—to make sure that this Mango doesn't rot on the shelf.