BA's new app is a good example, with the live tile giving you gate information and other bits and bobs of data. An improvement over the static BA logo you'll see if you use the app on WP7.
Similarly, Flux's RSS reader app will highlight the latest story on the tile or tell you the number of unread stories you have. Other design elements that have been added include a stronger use of the search button.
Now, it is everywhere, so much so we aren't really sure how Microsoft can insist on a dedicated hardware button. A new search button on the apps list not only lets you search for the app on your phone, but also lets you search for the app in Marketplace - handy if you can't remember whether you have a weather app or not.
That search button also speeds up trying to find a contact in the "people" pane. The design is clean and intuitive and integrates apps throughout the phone.
Like the original release of Windows Phone 7 you never have to think about opening an app, it's just there, and that's a very different philosophy to the other operating systems. Being social on Windows Phone 7 is now considerably easier and with Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn integration firmly at the centre of the phone.
LinkedIn is by far the most useful, and if your followers have added their email or phone number you can access that too. Like Apple's iOS 5, Twitter will be "baked-in" to the operating system giving you a chance to share and interact with your Twitter followers without having to resort to the app. Facebook - already available and up-and-running - has had a host of new features added too. These include Facebook events being automatically added to your calendar, the ability to choose whether you show just events you've accepted or everything you've been invited to.
Facebook Chat is also included, handy for people who use this as their main instant messenger. The last is the most interesting though, as Microsoft has integrated it in such a way that you can have a threaded conversation with someone over text, Microsoft IM, or Facebook Chat all in the same window. It is an approach that is very "webOS" admittedly and very people - rather than app - focused. The person you are talking to might be darting from machine to machine or app to app, but you're just there in one thread.
It's pretty impressive and demonstrates Microsoft's belief that apps are too linear and this way - the Mango way - is considerably "big picture" focused. The end result is that we've been conversing more on Facebook and certainly more on LinkedIn than we ever have with the iPhone or Android handsets, and yet haven't actually installed the dedicated Windows Phone 7 Facebook app. We aren't even sure why you would bother with Facebook as the social network is so pervasive there's no need.
Where they really work well is the People hub that allows you to group your friends, family, and colleagues off into subset, but also select which social feed you want to see, be it just Twitter or all of them. Thankfully if you are one of these people who follows thousands on Twitter you can set it so only those in your address book are shown. It's funny that we said there needs to be a way to manage the flood of information, because that's exactly what a new feature within the People Hub lets you do.
Microsoft has introduced Groups, a feature we just can't get enough of. It allows you to block out the noise that little bit easier - especially at weekends.
The idea of Groups is that you select a group of people - Apple calls them Favorites - and then that gives you access to them, and only them, in isolation of everything else going on in your life. We set up one for the Pocket-lint team, one for the family, and then one for close friends. The result is that we could easily see, at any given moment, what those people were up to without having to filter through all the other Facebook status posts.
You can also pin the group to the start page to make it even easier to see. Add Twitter into that, and you can see the power of it, especially if you use either for work and then want to dip in over the weekend without feeling like you're going to end up getting dragged back into the "office".
But it's more than looking at status updates. You can email and text those in the group, making communicating so much easier - surely the point of a modern phone. We love it. We also love the new history feature that lets you see when and what you last said to someone be it a text message, an email, or chat.
If you hadn't already worked it out, if you're into Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or into any social networking platform you're a bit of an egotistical, narcissistic, kind of person that loves to gloat about what you do and why you are doing it. You might not agree with that but Microsoft has you covered with something called "Me" that has been enhanced for Mango.
That's right, you're so important that you've got your own live tile to see what is happening with you in case you forget who you are. Twitter or Facebook mentions pop up and are displayed on the live tile so you can see what's happening and you can cross post to the relevant social networks clicking and choosing as you please. If that wasn't enough to tickle your "I'm more important than you" fancy you can use the same area to find out who is commenting on your status updates, and what you've said in the past just in case you're trying to piece together the last 24 hours of your life.
If you love yourself, or even if you don't, you'll find this is a good way of getting social on your phone and that can only mean one thing - those that follow you are about to get a lot more messages from you in the future.
The catch here is that you can't post pictures you have to do that from the pictures hub and you can't see peoples' tweets or Facebook messages in context. Still as a quick - "oh I've been mentioned" it is great. If you've used an iPhone or Android you'll know that the browser is really the key element and here it's no different.
For Mango, the browser has been expanded and improved. It now has hardware acceleration support meaning the better the phone's hardware capabilities the better your browsing is going to be. We doubt it's been an influence, but the browser has a strong similarity to Firefox for Android in that it believes that the accompanying faff should be ditched. The address bar is now at the bottom - easier to access - the menu is hidden, and the only other key is the refresh button.
That leaves plenty of space for the web page you're looking at and little to clutter the screen. Windows Phone 7 smartphones to date have already benefited from a bigger screen, and Apple's suggestion that you always need to know the network you are on, your battery life, and the time, seems rather redundant. Other new features of note include the ability to now share the page via messaging, email, or social networks.
We can't believe this wasn't here before but it's welcomed. Surprisingly while you can still pin a website to the start screen, it still takes the image of the page to that tile without updating it.
Part of your internet experience on any smartphone will be search. Whether you are an iPhone or Android user searching for stuff, be it a local bar or just the answer to something to prove your mate wrong, is key to your day-to-day mobile life. It's here then that switchers will find the biggest challenge. You've got to use Bing.
In our initial play we struggled with Bing having to install gMaps and Google search. Bing is getting better, but we would still recommend installing the Google products as a back up.
It's a shame because beyond the basic search there are some really nifty features here. Bing Music for example gives you Shazam-like capabilities that will let you record a snippet of music in a bar, tell you what it is, and then give you the option to download it straight from the Zune Marketplace.
It supports WPA2 encryption and can handle up to five devices at once, which is fairly standard. To see all of your mentions, you need to head over to the Me hub and check out the Notifications pivot In this respect, the functionality divide between the People and Me hubs seems a little arbitrary to me.
You can update all your services at once or a subset. In my testing, it works very quickly and silently - check out your full app list, and the new app you selected is magically there. Though the IE9-based browser is essentially the same since our preview, I wanted to circle back and talk about it a bit. You can load up to six tabs at a time, seemingly with no hit on performance on each tab - scroll and zoom performance remained pitch-perfect throughout.
Put simply, I love Live Tiles, and Mango finally takes them to where they need to be. All of the apps I tested implemented Live Tiles, meaning you get something more than a static icon when you pin the app to the home screen; frankly, half the fun of it was seeing in what creative way each app used its Live Tile space. Foursquare, for instance, shows your position in your leaderboard, while Allrecipes teases a featured recipe that changes daily.
Ultimately, I think a high level of configurability within each app is going to be important - everyone has a different idea of what they want to see on their home screen - but I was fascinated to see what these developers have done on their first pass. Multitasking works well, particularly in Mango apps. Keep on the good work! Tango video chat app seems good but it is useful to few people only. Hope to see some more useful application for my WP handset. Good news for WP users. Great Post!!
You have done an outstanding work by posting such beneficial information about cool apps for windows phone. It looks great… It will definitely useful for windows phone users. I enjoyed your article and learned a lot. Keep sharing this type of informative articles in futures. I have been using this app even when I was using my iPhone and Android phone. Let me tell you this is the best app for me all the OSes and on Windows Phone 7.
While surfing on the Google search engine you can just make notes on this app. A must have app for all three platforms: Windows Phone 7. I have Endomondo on my windows phones. I must say this is a must-have app for all the sports lovers. This Tango app is kind of an eye candy.
Providing free video calls over 3G and 4G network is quite a nice app. Even more it gets cooler with its new apps. I just wonder when they would have a skype application because its pretty useful it they added that kind of apps.
Well thank you for sharing! I know this is some thing a very interesting initiation from Nokia to collaborate with Microsoft to enable this new innovation about this.
Nice post. Hey Thomas, HandyScan is really very useful app. Justifying its name to the fullest, it comes in very handy on a daily basis. Being and Android user, I would like to know about best Android Applications. So will you recommend some Android applications? Being a Windows Phone user, I love to read such kind of posts which shares new app for Windows phone, as you know that Windows mobile has limited applications.
So, I usually keep searching for any new application for Windows mobile. Dear Thomas, I would like to know if there are any good file transferring app in for iOS, that can create a bridge between my iphone and the desktop? Hi I am not the right one to help you with that.
I have very little knowledge of iPhones and Apple. I am sure you can find help if you do some Google searching on the topic. It is about 4 years ago I had a Windows Phone. A lot have happens since then.
Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. Skip to content. About the author: I am an IT Professional that has this blog as a hobby project in my spare time. I have been in the IT business since and want to share some of the thing I have picked up over the years, with people who visit this blog.
How to backup Windows 7 with built-in backup Technology. January 28, Thomas 0. If you have been using Endomondo like me, you might have noticed that the app has
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