Mango Preview Event Recap

Our fingers are sore and somehow we just cracked the bones in our palms, but we really survived today's onslaught of news. Mango is shaping up to be an entirely new breed of Windows Phone. From MIX '11 we heard a lot about the developer-side of things and how apps are getting more tightly integrated, but today was all about the consumer features and Microsoft didn't hold back. So in case you missed any news from today's Mango Preview Event here's the full list of every post we've done today.

Rumor Bingo Results Are In!
If you were playing our Mango Rumor Bingo while the action was going down today then good news...DOUBLE BINGO! Let's take a look at what popped up green on our bingo sheet, and what didn't make the cut.

Watch the Preview Event Presentation Now!
Microsoft has uploaded the footage of the Mango Preview Event from earlier this morning. If you want to see Voice to Text, Groups, Threads, and more in action for yourself than start watching!

New People Hub Confirmed with Chat, Integrated Photos, Groups, Twitter, and more
There are a ton of new features being added to the People Hub. How do we know that? Because that part of the presentation this morning took about a third of the total time, that's why!

Games Hub, Music + Videos Hub, and Office Hub Completely Revamped
The Music + Videos Hub, the Office Hub, and the Games Hub have all seen pretty significant facelifts, but the demo only presented the latter two so the changes to the Music + Videos Hub remains to be seen in-depth. Are you excited by these new Hub-centric features?

New Bing Features Confirmed
It looks like those Bing rumors were true and the presentation confirmed that this Fall we'll be seeing "Visual Search" and "Music Search". However, there was another new Bing feature that caught us by surprise: "Local Scout". This feature basically recognizes 'neighborhoods' in cities and will show you a ton of information about them.

Fall Launch for Mango Confirmed
Mango is going to be launching by this Fall for existing users. We're also just going to assume that Fall will be bringing along the next wave of Windows Phones as well.

Acer, Fujitsu, and ZTE Are New Partners, 4G Windows Phones Coming
The rumors are true and we are seeing new hardware partners enlisting in the Windows Phone cause. Some existing manufacturers that are preparing devices for the Mango launch, which includes Samsung, LG and HTC. Then there's the new soldiers in their army: Acer, Fujitsu, and ZTE. Plus Microsoft said they already have Nokia-built Windows Phones running Mango test builds and that 4G Windows Phones are on their way with Mango.

New Advertisement Shows Off Threads, Local Scout, Groups, and More
This new advertisement was shown at the end of today's presentation and for now, so if you want to see Threads, Local Scout, Groups, Bing, and more in action feel free to check out the cool video.

Joe Belfiore Demos New Mango Features
Sadly our go-to Windows Phone representative Joe Belfiore was absent from today's Mango Preview Event, but he was there in spirit. And in a new YouTube video.

Qualcomm Says to Expect Snapdragon in Mango Launch Devices
A statement from Qualcomm's executive VP says that the next-generation of Windows Phone handsets are going to be Snapdragon-fueled. It seems like they were stating the obvious, but recent news about ST-Ericsson making a move into the Windows Phone chip race required a little bit of clarification from Qualcomm.

Microsoft Launches Revamped "What's Next" Page on Official Site, One-Stop Mango Shop
Microsoft's official Windows Phone website has seen the 'What's Next' completely revamped. For now theres not much to it, but the info it features is in a nice, easy to use fashion.

Voice to Text Confirmed, Completely Hands-Free
During this morning's presentation, one extremely impressive demo was the snazzy new Voice-to-Text feature to be included in Mango later this Fall. We had heard rumors about it earlier, but today we got a quick look at how it works.

Windows Phone Marketplace Expanded to New Countries, Web-Friendly Version in the Works
The Windows Phone Developer Blog went into big Marketplace changes that we can see in action soon. First of all, the Mango Marketplace will be expanding from 16 countries to a strong 35, and each new country will include local support for app submissions and app purchases. Next up is big news that a web browser version of the Marketplace will launch alongside Mango later this year. One thing the post did confirm is that users can "buy/download apps and games from any PC and send them directly to their phones."

New Screenshots of Threads, Groups, Bing, IE9 and more
We just wanted to share with you a few new direct-feed screenshots Microsoft just debuted in the Windows Phone Newsroom. The screenshots show a ton of Mango highlights from today, including Threads, Local Scout, Groups, the revamped Contacts, Internet Explorer 9 and a Start Screen featuring the new People Hub tile and Linked Inbox.

Dell Not Ready for Mango
We were wondering why Dell was oddly absent during Microsoft's roll call of Windows Phone hardware partners at this morning's keynote, and now we may know why.

Mango Development Tools Now Available!
So do you remember those Mango Development SDK that was announced during MIX '11 earlier this year? Well they're coming out...today!



Videos Featuring Local Scout, Multitasking, Groups, and More Now Available
Do you want more videos of Mango in action? You've got em! Microsoft has uploaded a ton of videos in their Windows Phone Newsroom Video Gallery and we've done the courteous thing and uploaded all of them to our YouTube channel.

Video of Turn-By-Turn Navigation Leaked
Just when we thought the day was done, up comes this. A new video showing a beta build of Mango in an emulator includes Bing Maps-powered turn-by-turn navigation!

Redesigned Zune Player Spotted in Facebook Live Demo
Remember that Facebook live demo of Mango we mentioned earlier? It just finished a few minutes ago and it wasn't much more than a rehash of today's press event. But we did manage to spot one thing that should fill up a spot in our Rumor Bingo sheet: the redesigned Zune player!

Tons of New Features Discovered in Mango SDK
XDA-Developers has appropriately torn into the new Mango Development SDK like a present on Christmas morning, and they've found quite a few juicy morsels we didn't know about yet. We're planning to go more in-depth with the emulator ourselves soon, but in the meantime just look at all of this stuff!

Mango Preview: Tons of New Features Discovered in Mango SDK

XDA-Developers has appropriately torn into the new Mango Development SDK like a present on Christmas morning, and they've found quite a few juicy morsels we didn't know about yet. In Zune there's a couple of notable additions like Smart-DJ support, the ability to save playlists, and a new Related Artists pivot in the artist panorama. In Maps we've already seen turn-by-turn navigation leaked, but there's also the added ability to move around on the map while directions are open and the small yellow icon that displays your current location is now colored to match your theme. In Bing itself, we're seeing a good number of changes including Music Search will offer a direct link to the Marketplace after recognizing a song, a built-in app search feature which brings up links to apps in the Search results, and the new ability to unlock your phone via the hardware Search button! We also saw that the camera can now remember your settings (yes!), substantial predictive-text improvements in the native keyboard, Internet Explorer 9 performance boosts and more.

We're planning to go more in-depth with the emulator ourselves soon, but in the meantime just look at all of this stuff! Jump past the break for more images of IE9, Music Search, Zune, Maps, Background Tasks, and Bing App Search along with the full list of features discovered so far.

We'd just like to give a big shout out to XDA-Developers user Robin.B for all of the screenshots and the full feature list. Thanks!

Via: WMPoweruser
Source: XDA-Developers

Zune:

• There's a smart-dj feature
• You can create and save playlists
• There's a "related artists" and bio under the artist tab, great for discovering music
• Podcasts work well
• You can't "heart" songs (at least in the emulator)
• There's still no scrub controls

Bing & Maps

• Bing maps has voice-guided directions as expected
• You can show traffic on maps
• Still no landscape maps
• It's now possible to scroll the mini-map while the text directions are on-screen
• Bing music recognizes music like Shazam and clicking on the result will take you to zune marketplace
• You can now unlock the phone using the search button, apparently
• If you search for something on Bing that has an application equivalent; it will show you a link to the application within Bing.
• The "my location" icon now has the same colour as the OS theme

Keyboard

• Keyboard prediction has been improved a lot:
• It previously didn't correct misspellings of many short words like ar -> at, fir-> for and br-> be), now it does
• It also now corrects it if you press a letter instead of space between two words e.g. it will suggest "I'm about" if you type imnabout or imnaboit, and will suggest "How are you" if you type "hownarebyou"
• The keyboard also corrects common misspellings like Profesional -> Professional
• Keyboard tries to predict next word (as shown at 24th May event), e.g. If you type I, then "tr", it will suggest "tried", whereas in WP7 it will suggest nothing. This seems to work pretty well

IE

• Websites seem to render more accurately
• Websites can use GPS data for location
• Bing suggestions now appear when typing a search in IE as well
• Text still looks garbled when really zoomed out
• Tab animation has changed very subtly

General OS

• Same colour themes as last time
• It appears you can't "press and hold" the back button in the emulator, meaning possibly we can't do multitasking, even in an unlocked emulator.

Camera

• No changes in general layout. There seems to be a software camera button in the camera app
• The camera now has an auto-fix feature for pictures.
• It now seems to remember settings!

 

Mango Preview: Watch the Preview Event Presentation Now!

Microsoft has uploaded the footage of the Mango Preview Event from earlier this morning. If you want to see Voice to Text, Groups, Threads, and more in action for yourself than start watching!

Note: Video requires Silverlight.

Source: Windows Phone Newsroom: Webcast

Mango Preview: Rumor Bingo Results Are In!

Man what a day! We've done sixteen posts on today's Mango Preview Event and we're pretty sure we broke a few fingers in the process. Don't beat yourself up -- it was all worth it to see so much awesome functionality coming to our precious Windows Phones in the future. Well if you were playing our Mango Rumor Bingo while the action was going down then good news...DOUBLE BINGO! Let's take a look at what popped up green on our bingo sheet:

• That swanky new live tile for the People Hub made an appearance during the presentation and in one of Microsoft's official screenshots.
• New Bing features like Visual Search, Music Search, and Local Scout were confirmed. We're excited.
• Built-in Facebook check in support was confirmed by the official Windows Phone Blog today but Microsoft hasn't shown it off yet nor have we spotted any videos or photos of it in action.
• Voice to Text was demoed for a few minutes during the presentation.
• The Linked Inbox has been confirmed and appears in a screenshot, but no one from Microsoft is referring to it as that by name and for now they aren't showing off how exactly it works.
• Turn-By-Turn Navigation from Bing Maps is now seemingly confirmed thanks to a video that was taken from the Mango SDK tools.
• The revamped Messaging Hub which now features an instant messaging/text/email interoperability called 'Threads'
• The redesigned Zune player was spotted in the Facebook live demo.
• Visual voicemail was candidly confirmed during the presentation.

But what functionality didn't come to Windows Phone that was rumored and considered highly likely to make an appearance today? Let's break it down.

• Windows Phone Mango was not renamed Windows Phone 7.5. We thought this one would definitely happen, but Microsoft has yet to commit to a name to go to market with.
• Rumors of Zune getting split up into Xbox Live and Windows Live brands failed to come to fruition, and the original rumor said it would happen specifically today.
• Sadly no news about Mobile Hotspot or even USB tethering yet, but we're assuming it's going to come with the hardware announcements when Mango officially launches.
• Skype integration was rumored but since the acquisition isn't supposed to be finalized until this Fall, Microsoft most likely just hasn't had enough time. We don't even think it'll make it into the final build of Mango.
• Here's the big one: zero hardware announcements. We heard that crazy rumor of 9 new devices launching today but we should have known better from the rumor's shady origins.

It's still entirely possible some of the unconfirmed rumors could come true (turn-by-turn navigation was discovered as we were writing this up) but we're exhausted! We'll be calling it a day folks (but not before an obligatory recap post).

What are your final thoughts on the rumors that didn't work out for today? Still have hopes?

Mango Preview: Redesigned Zune Player Spotted in Facebook Live Demo

Remember that Facebook live demo of Mango we mentioned earlier? It just finished a few minutes ago and it wasn't much more than a rehash of today's press event. But we did manage to spot one thing that should fill up a spot in our Rumor Bingo sheet: the redesigned Zune player! We took a screenshot of it from a tiny, tiny window on the Facebook page. so the image is small and a little hard to see but it's all the proof we need to confirm yet another dead-on rumor. If you want a better look at the redesigned Zune player you can find the larger rumored screenshot past the break.

Mango Preview: Video of Turn-By-Turn Navigation Leaked

Just when we thought the day was done, up comes this. A new video showing a beta build of Mango in an emulator includes Bing Maps-powered turn-by-turn navigation! What's more, we can hear voice guided directions in the video too. From the video description:

"Messaging is not perfect when a turns comes up, but I think that's because speed and heading is not transmitted by the emulator. Also this is only a beta of Mango and running on an emulator. I assume it'll be better soon."

Check out the YouTube page for the video here. We were just about to post up our Mango Rumor Bingo results too, but now we think we should wait for a few hours. Clearly Microsoft hasn't dealt all of the tricks up their sleeves yet, so stay tuned for even more Mango features over the coming weeks and months.

Via: Twitter (@SharpGIS)
Source: YouTube

Mango Preview: Videos Featuring Local Scout, Multitasking, Groups, and More Now Available

Do you want more videos of Mango in action? You've got em! Microsoft has uploaded a ton of videos in their Windows Phone Newsroom Video Gallery and we've done the courteous thing and uploaded all of them to our YouTube channel. Check out Groups above and past the break you'll find more videos of Threads, Internet Explorer 9, Local Scout, Multitasking, and the Start Page plus that slick new sizzle reel that ended the presentation. Well, what are you waiting for?

Mango Preview: Mango Development Tools To Be Released Today (Update: Now Available!)

So do you remember those Mango Development SDK that was announced during MIX '11 earlier this year? Well they're coming out...today! Andy Lees announced it during the presentation and Microsoft's Windows Phone Developer Blog was promptly updated. Visit the link for all of the juicy details and start coding!

UPDATE 2: Downloads are now officially up. Get it from here!

UPDATE: While the download link itself is down thanks to a tidal wave of excited developers, you can start stalking this post in the App Hub for when you can sneak in and get your keys to the Mango app kingdom. Plus we now know a bit more info about the tools:

We listened to what developers told us they wanted, and in Windows Phone Mango we're delivering outstanding new features including background processing, massive Live Tile functionality updates, direct camera access, sockets, a new profiler and emulator, deep linking into apps, local database support, and a new web browser control based on IE9 that supports HTML5.

Concurrent with this release of the tools, we’ve updated our official documentation in the What’s New in Windows Phone Developer Tools topic in the MSDN Library, created 22 new code samples, and released 10 new hands-on labs specific to Windows Phone Mango.

We’ve also updated our Game Development page to highlight some of the new resources available for phone game developers using Windows Phone Mango. New game developer resources include an updated version of Game State Management, guides explaining what’s new in the platform (including the Silverlight/XNA Framework integrated application model and Visual Basic support), and more samples and articles.

Source: Windows Phone Developer Blog, App Hub

Mango Preview: Dell Not Ready for Mango

We were wondering why Dell was oddly absent during Microsoft's roll call of Windows Phone hardware partners at this morning's keynote, and now we may know why. Engadget was at first told to "stay tuned" about Dell's commitment to Windows Phone, but later updated their post with a more substantial Microsoft response. Basically, Dell isn't ready to commit to Mango with hardware yet and so Microsoft left their name off the list. Thinking back now, Andy Lees did say that the manufacturers named were referring to those that were preparing Mango handsets, so it does make some sense why Dell wasn't there. However Microsoft was clear to Engadget that Dell is still considered a Windows Phone hardware partner, so don't freak out if you still had high hopes for a Venue Pro 2. Still, Dell is clearly hesitant about Mango and considering their missteps so far one has to wonder if they're just going to drop out all together.

Source: Engadget

Mango Preview: New Screenshots of Threads, Groups, Bing, IE9 and more

We just wanted to share with you a few new direct-feed screenshots Microsoft just debuted in the Windows Phone Newsroom. The screenshots show a ton of Mango highlights from today, including Threads, Local Scout, Groups, the revamped Contacts, Internet Explorer 9 and a Start Screen featuring the new People Hub tile and Linked Inbox. Check out the ones above and several more below.

Source: Windows Phone Newsroom