keith.kg

Windows Phone Mango Update

Finally managed to get Zune to upgrade my phone with the Mango Update or Windows Phone 7.5. Once Zune picked-up the update it took about an hour to download, back-up and install. 

People Hub

After the install I had to set-up Twitter and Linked in accounts. These are now integrated into the People hub which means checking that all your contacts are linked to their additional accounts, most were updated automatically. Another useful feature in the People hub is the ability to create groups - which like contacts can be added to the start menu and can help with sending group messages/emails. Unfortunatly it doesn’t automatically pull your groups from Facebook. 

Messaging Hub

The messaging hub has also been given a refresh. Most noticeably the message tiles are now two tone one shade for the contact another for your messages. A single thread can now include messages from Text, MMS, Windows Live Messenger and Facebook Messenger keeping everything in one place. 

Internet Explorer 9

The default web browser has been updated to IE9 which is much smoother than it’s predecessor and includes support for hardware-accelerated graphics and a new JavaScript engine. 

Other new features

• Battery Saver which lets Windows Phone turn off features to help preserve battery life. 
• Local Scout helps you discover places and activities around your location. 
• Multitasking makes it easy to switch between apps and not just back like before. 

There’s probably more but I just haven’t found them yet. 

I ♥ Windows Phone 7

I’ve had it for around about a month and there’s no other way to put it, I love my Windows Phone 7 mobile. My Old Windows Mobile 6 used to do everything, it just took a while to get there. WP7 does it all with little or no effort. It really is simple to use, and I wanted to highlight some of my favourite features:

• The phone automatically syncs over WiFi with my laptop when they’re on the same network, this includes photos, music, videos and docs.
• The camera app can be loaded simply by holding in the camera button, no need to unlock, you don’t have to look for the icon and wait for it to load. Simple.
• Unlike my iPod I can sync my phone with as many computer as I need and Zune keeps everything up to date without wiping everything each time.
• The universal back button is fantastic. Read an email, click on a hyper link and the page opens, read it and press back to go back to the email.
• ONENOTE! I don’t know about everyone else but my live is centred around the info I store on Microsoft Office OneNote and now I have it on the go!

So far the downside include lack of copy and paste and Adobe Flash. The Marketplace app store is getting there in terms of available applications, but is still lacking.

Hello Windows Phone 7

Set-up took seconds. All I had to do was set-up my Windows Live, Google, Facebook and Exchange accounts and WP7 pulled togeather all my contacts and friends from the different platforms! Even better it automatically merged people who appeared on more than one account where it could matching names, email addresses, and mobile numbers. Within 5 minutes everything was set up and I could go about the ever important task of picking out my apps!