There were some juicy announcements at the Windows Phone 7 Mango update launch in London yesterday, not least the arrival of several new big brand handset manufacturers to the fold. But what about the OS itself? How’s that changed? See for yourself in our video walkthrough right here.
In the clips below, a Microsoft staffer shows us the ins and outs of Windows Phone 7 Mango (running on an Asus test unit which isn’t coming to market, alas), including the much vaunted third party app multitasking, which works in a similar way to multitasking on iPhone, by only permitting a few key background processes, such as music streaming. You simply hold down the back key and up the open apps pop, with screenshots of the state of each.
Perhaps of more interest though is the Groups function, which lets you plonk a few mates into one tile, see what they’re saying and contact them all in one swoop. We quite like this as a way of separating your close friends from your acquaintances on Facebook, and letting everyone on your team know what time the game is on Sunday.
Finally, we’re particularly taken with the way Windows Phone 7 Mango threads chats across Facebook, texts and Windows Live Messenger. It’s an idea Palm first introduced with webOS, better executed – we just wish other IM clients could take advantage of it too. Perhaps in time.
Windows Phone 7 Mango will be a free update, due in the Autumn. Too little too late? Let us know in the comments.
