Windows Phone Mango

On the 24th of May, 2011 Microsoft provided a first look at the next release of Windows Phone (7.1 - codenamed Mango). The video is very marketing focused ( more of the same) and highlights some of the consumer orientated enhancements to the user interface. It is important for developers to be across what these enhancements are to optimise their in-application experience.

• Application integration with search results.
• More information on live tiles.
• Introduction of multitasking.
• An IE9-based rendering engine.
• Improved e-mail reading with threading.
• Grouping of contacts.
• Multiple communications approaches (sms, facebook etc) into one thread.

Whilst the new operating system hasn't been released yet, developers can still get access to the SDK to start getting their apps ready for the new version of the platform. For us it is probably the more developer centric improvements that get us excited.

• Better integration with phone data (contacts etc).
• Better integration with phone hardware (the ability to access the camera directly).
• Better developer tools, for example the emulator now allows you to set GPS coordinates using an integrated Bing map.
• The ability to perform processing in the background with background agents.

We are hoping to see Mango released later this calendar year but Microsoft is being quite tight lipped about the timeframe for the updated release. In the meantime we are going to be working with customers to see what new platform features make sense to include in their application updates.