Windows Phone OS to Receive More Mango Juice
The more time passes the more May 24th can’t quite get here soon enough. Check that, the release of the new tools & emulator can’t. Windows Phone Dev Podcast has revealed even MORE Mango goodies set to arrive in the coming update. Set to debut in the Mango update are:
That’s right, Facebook Chat integration! Apparently integration is the big theme of Mango. What the Windows Phone team wanted to release from the start.
Group Texting: Create a group and message the entire group in one swoop. Combine this with Live Tile and that’s two presses to group text. Efficiency at its best.
The Games Hub is getting revamped and it looks like the games are moving to the Xbox Live Hub instead of the Zune Marketplace. It is probably a precursor to the Zune branding being phased out.
Not sure what to make of this but its some kind of auto sync and my guess would be for it to be related to online leaderboards.
Office365 support on the phone! As someone who is Beta testing and looking to use Office365 in the retail release this is an exciting development. Those who are unfamiliar should really do themselves a favor and check out Office365.com.
Yes you will have a simpler way to access the SkyDrive. You will even be able to choose to open docs in the browser or work on the phone. Nice simple way to get things done.
The previous leaked info WPDevPodcast released was Bing Vision, Bing Audio, Speech to Text and Turn-by-Turn Navigation. This update looks to be more than I hoped for but I can’t speak for you all. What say you, color yourself impressed yet?
Source: Windows Phone Dev Podcast
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Just a note, that’s Group Text AND email. And what makes you think the games are moving to XBox vs. Zune. The large tiles all say XBox Live now so all they did was move the title to the top of the list. And “get more games” is there now. Just sayin.
You’re right it is group email also. It was mentioned that Zune was maybe being rebranded Xbox Live but probably was just confusion. Thanks for the note.
I have been reading about the Zune faze out rumors, but the more I think about it I can’t really justify the idea in my head. The Zune brand is an integral part or Windows Phone right now, same as XBox. Can’t think of one good reason to confuse users with rebranding.
So far, I think all Microsoft has said is that they wouldn’t be delivering any new Zune devices. Actually though I wouldn’t be that surprised to see a third party Zune player this holiday season.
Jim, Microsoft has already stated they are keeping all Zune software and services. They also denied they were killing Zune hardware. Something is up. I suspect Microsoft is adding cloud streaming and storage to Zune, and they might even re-brand it.
Not sure if it’s intentional on Microsoft’s part but this Beta raelese is a great way to test the update with multiple devices months ahead of time and see how the different configurations respond in addition to the main goal of getting the OS in developers hands on a retail device. This still won’t stop the lame carriers from dragging update testing out but it should eliminate most if not all of the speed bump issues like we had early in the year because every type of retail device should have Mango on it by now.