How to Update to the new Mango Beta WITHOUT a Developer Account!

Want to update to the new Mango Beta that was just release for developers? Normally you would need to be a registered developer, but I've got your back on this one. We've figured out a way to update your device to Mango Beta build 7712! How do we know this works? We just did it ourselves and the photo you see above is the proof! This method is a lot easier than before when you had to flash your device, so if you've already gotten the old beta the hard part is mostly over. This is a cakewalk in comparison!

Note: This method requires the old Mango beta to be installed on your device already. This method is building directly upon Windows Phone Hacker's Jaxbot's method of updating to the old Mango beta. Please read that here before continuing.

Disclaimer:
Windows Phone Daily DOES NOT take responsibility if your device is bricked during this process. You are performing this update AT YOUR OWN RISK.

WARNING!
Despite this being a normal update similar to how your device updated to NoDo, there is ALWAYS a risk of bricking your device. So if anything goes wrong neither us or Microsoft can help you get a new or repaired device. Once again, this is AT YOUR OWN RISK

Download this zip file. It contains the new Zune Beta and the UpdateWP files.

Instructions (Read EVERYTHING carefully!):

1. Use Jaxbot's previous method to update to the old Mango beta (click here). This will also create a backup NEEDED to get you back to retail software updates.
2. After using Jaxbot's method, double check that you have your backup. It should be in C:\PreMangoState.
3. CHECK YOUR BACKUP! Extremely important that it's there!
4. Now download this zip file. This is absolutely necessary and includes these same instructions as well as the new Beta Zune client (different from the earlier beta), and the new UpdateWP file.
5. While it's downloading, disconnect your phone from your PC and uninstall the earlier Zune beta software.
6. Once the ZIP file completes downloading, extract its contents and you should see two things: a program called ZunePackage.exe and a folder called 'UpdateWP'.
7. First click on ZunePackage.exe - this will install the new Zune client you need to update.
8. Finish installing Zune. Don't open Zune yet if it asks.
9. Go to C:\Program Files\Zune and look for two files: UpdateWP.exe and WM7Update.dll. DELETE both.
10. Now open the 'UpdateWP' folder you extracted earlier. You should see two files: "UpdateWP (for 32-bit computers).exe" and "UpdateWP (for 64-bit computers).exe". Click on the one that corresponds to your desktop's operating system type (Read this if you're not sure).
11. You should see a small window pop up and within five minutes it will disappear. Once it disappears, UpdateWP should have completed. 
12. Double check that it is done. Go to C:\Program Files\Zune and make sure you find two files: UpdateWP.exe and WM7Update.dll. DO NOT delete these - they are used to find the new update for your Mango Beta device.
13. Connect your Windows Phone to your PC (Remember: It should ALREADY have the first Mango Beta installed on it, otherwise it won't work).
14. Now open Zune (if it hasn't opened already) and let your device sync. If everything went according to plan, Zune should open a page with an Update dialog on it and tell you your phone has an update available for Build 7712. If you do NOT see this, make sure you followed all of the steps and that you have a working internet connection when you sync your device to Zune.
15. Enjoy! :D

Five Things We Love (and Five Things We Hate) about Windows Phone Mango

As gracious as Microsoft has been to let developers get their hands on Mango ahead of the mass population, they didn't do it just for kicks. No, Microsoft wants to see real feedback from real people about their operating system's next major update so they can get to work. Well we're here to do our part now and after spending a few weeks with the Mango beta on our Samsung Focus, we're ready to tell Microsoft just how we feel about Mango. Here are the five things we love (and the five things we hate) about Windows Phone Mango.

We Love...
Bing
Microsoft's little-search-engine-that-could has really grown up in Mango. Before, Bing was lacking and was typically only useful for us when doing a quick web search or looking up directions. Now we've started making a habit of using it for a lot more thanks to the new features included. Whether it's busting out our phone to figure out just what song that is with Music, having some spare time to look nearby with Local Scout, or going crazy and scanning random stuff with Vision, Bing has never been better.

People Hub / Me Tile
Windows Phone 7 when it was initially launched was nicknamed by the press as "the Facebook phone", and in Mango that has only become more true. The Me tile plays a significant part in Mango's social skills, which now includes quick access to status updates, Places check-in support, notifications, and chat status. Then if you jump into the People Hub, each contact linked to their Facebook or Live account has their Pictures included. Tie all of these features into the new Groups, and we think a lot of people will be 'Like'-ing Mango this Fall.

Internet Explorer 9

As fast and responsive as Internet Explorer Mobile was in the past, IE9 kicks things up a notch. Not only is the browser faster, it's also just plain better. Color banding is a thing of the past, weird formatted text is (mostly) gone, and we can finally use a near 90% of our screen to browse the web. Some have sorely missed the removed fullscreen option in landscape mode, but it really isn't a very big deal (especially because devices like the HTC Arrive/7 Pro needed compatibility). Plus HTML5 really rocks, we just hope more sites plan to recognize IE9 mobile (for example, YouTube's HTML5 mobile site doesn't show up in Mango--just the standard mobile site).

Marketplace

To say the Marketplace needed an overhaul would be an understatement, and Microsoft heard complaints loud and clear. The new Marketplace is a totally amped-up experience, making a ton of new layout changes and yet maintaining the same exact feel as before. Games and Apps have finally been properly separated, the native Podcast support is powerful enough to kill any 3rd-party apps available right now, and now even more content is shown meaning developers are more likely to get their app into a spotlight while users can find even more great apps. Win-win.

The Little Things

Windows Phone really excels when it comes to the little things--the tiny features that can plant a big wide smile on your face. One of our favorites is the new keyboard prediction enhancements, which are shockingly accurate. For example when we typed in 'The Dark Knight' and then typed a single R after it, the first predictive choice was 'Riddler'. That's awesome! Another tiny feature we love are the new interactions you can have with your Avatar in the Games Hub. Or the new ability to pin folders from an email account to the Start page, which is absurdly useful for us bloggers. There's tons more that we haven't mentioned here, but all of them combine to create a really memorable experience and shows us that Microsoft is pouring plenty of love into Mango before it reaches the production floor.

We Hate...
Multitasking
Before the hate mail starts pouring in, hear us out. For one, we obviously know that multitasking is still a Beta feature and we don't have any 3rd-party apps with the feature enabled. Secondly, our issue isn't with 3rd-party apps or apps at all--it's the limitations Microsoft has imposed on the feature that has our blood boiling. In its current Beta form, only 5 apps are allowed to stay open in the fast app switcher (aka the "Cards" view). Besides that, apps can also use APIs to do different tasks in the background even if they're not open in a Card. While in theory that sounds fine, in execution it was lacking. If you open app number 6, app number 1's Card disappears (it gets tombstoned) and there's no way of going back to where you were. In our opinion five is just too restrictive for what people want to do with apps.

For example, I'd love to be able to keep a Twitter app open at all times while I do other things so I can quickly go back. But for now that's impossible unless you do a lot of micromanagement to make sure the app isn't accidentally killed. There's also no way to simply kill an app, like a basic X button, so you're forced to go inside the app and use the Back button to reverse your way out. We can't help but feel that in an effort to make multitasking simpler, Microsoft seems to have made it more confusing and a lot less intuitive. Hopefully we'll get to see a significantly revamped form of multitasking, but for now we can't say we're satisfied.

Limited Landscape Support
Yes Mango still lacks proper landscape support for a lot of areas within the operating system. Just like in NoDo and the launch firmware, none of the Hubs orient to landscape and that has to be the biggest oversight we've seen so far in Mango. How are devices like the HTC Arrive/7 Pro supposed to even use these when the keyboard is still out? Microsoft has created Windows Phone with the goal of it begin accepted across a variety of form factors. While it undoubtedly looks great in portrait mode, the simple fact remains that Windows Phones are coming out with slide-out keyboards and yet the operating system still doesn't properly support them.

New Drop-Down Volume Controls
Speaking of landscape, one new change in Mango that also adversely affects the side view in Mango are the new drop-down volume controls. While in portrait they work quite well with large playback controls and a quick way to jump into the Zune music player, in landscape they dramatically affect usability especially in games. How? Take a look at the photo below of a game of Angry Birds. The drop-down volume controls take up more than a third of the entire screen and you're left waiting a few seconds before it gets out of your way. There's so much unused space to the right of the controls too that we're left wondering why they couldn't have just rearranged some elements. It may seem like something small, but constant access to volume controls means this will affect a lot of people so we highly recommend Microsoft look at this.

Wi-Fi
This may seem like a pretty odd complaint at first, but there's a reason why we're bringing it up. With Mango-compliant apps on the horizon that will feature lots of new background tasks, data usage is definitely going to spike considerably. Yet once again in Mango, if you have set the Wi-Fi on and lock the screen it automatically sleeps. As data plans become more expensive with lower allowances, lots of consumers don't realize just how much data apps can consume and so they may go for the cheaper option. Then if someone has 3G on in the background and thought their Wi-Fi would also stay on with the screen locked, they may receive an unpleasant surprise come billing day. We understand why Mango puts Wi-Fi to sleep (it uses up quite a bit of battery if it's always on) but we don't understand why there isn't an option to turn the feature on/off at will in the Settings. It's something insignificant compared to the scale of Mango's features, but adding it could avoid a lot of future headaches and will really benefit the consumer.

The Little Things
There's good little things like above, and then there's bad little things. For example, Internet Explorer 9 tabs can each take up a card and this is nice for quick switching between them. However like we said before, there's no way to get a Card back after its gone and if you open one too many IE9 tabs you may just close an app you didn't want to by accident, so adding an option would be nice there. Then there's the mysterious absence of Windows Phone's much loved 'Extras' feature that lets developers "plug" their apps into areas of the OS. For example, Thumba Photo Editor used to plug into the Pictures Hub under Extras but now the menu is completely absent and therefore requires more steps to get to the app. Finally there's the odd choice in Bing search results that removed the 'News' pivot and instead added those results in a condensed form beneath your web search results. This actually confused us at first as we thought these were search results, and we can only imagine that others will mistakenly do the same. We hope Microsoft moves 'News' back to where it originally was as a pivot instead.

In Conclusion...

There's a lot to love about what Microsoft has achieved in Windows Phone Mango. They've finally made Bing useful, the People Hub makes relying on a Facebook app less of a requirement, Internet Explorer 9 gives its competitors a run for their money, the Marketplace offers more content without screwing up what made it so great, and there are delightful minor tweaks that we can't get enough of. However, Mango is far from perfect and there are plenty of issues to resolve. Multitasking is very close to being called 'botched' in its actual user friendliness, the lack of proper landscape support is something that should have been fixed before launch, the volume controls in landscape really harm the experience even more, the Wi-Fi default settings could end up (literally) costing consumers in the long run, and there are minor things that really tick us off as to why they were broken or have yet to be fixed. Overall, Mango is still very much in Beta and while they've clearly gotten a lot more right than wrong, we hope Microsoft's hard working Windows Phone team still has enough energy to get through the final push and tweak all of the things we mentioned.

Bing Vision: The Garage Sale Test

We've been absolutely giddy over the new Bing features added in Mango; from the incredible utility of Local Scout to the Shazam-slaying Bing Music, Microsoft has finally justified why the Search button should stick to the engine's services. However, there is one feature of Bing that may be the most difficult to describe and even more challenging to determine the value of: Bing Vision.

It's an incredibly cool feature that uses your phone's camera to search for items on the web. While the implementation is undeniably slick, we've struggled to find a situation where we'd actually want to use the feature in the few weeks we've had the Mango Beta on our phone. Well we finally came up with one to put Vision through its paces: a garage sale! What better place to whip out your phone and quickly look up some info on some goods? So to see how Bing Vision fared in our garage sale test, jump past the break.

Upon launching Vision (by tapping on the eye icon in Bing's appbar) you're presented with a text overlay on top of your camera's live feed. The text near the top states, "Scan barcodes, QR Codes, Microsoft Tags, Books, CDs and DVDs." Well it just so happened that this garage sale had all of those things and so we went all out. For those a little muddled on the feature, the way Vision works is extremely simple: open Vision, hold up your phone as though you're taking a photo of an item and then don't touch anything. Bing will automatically focus on the object and begin scanning the web for content. Then if it finds something it will spit back a list of results to choose from over the camera feed.

Like we said, we went all out and scanned a bunch of items. The result? Vision passed with (mostly) flying colors. First we tested out what Vision told us it could do: books, CDs, and DVDs. As you can see in the photos above, we were completely successful scanning an old Linkin Park CD, the Halo: Fall of Reach novel, and a used copy of Underworld on DVD. But then we decided to see if video games would work as well and to our surprise they did. As you can see in the bottom-right photo above, Bing Vision even accurately picked up on the full Guitar Hero 2 with Guitar set when we pointed it at the box. It's clear that Bing Vision can handle a lot of stuff, but we did run into a few hiccups. A more obscure copy of John Steinbeck's Once There Was a War sadly didn't pick up on any results.

However, the bigger takeaway we found from Bing Vision wasn't the core functionality or how accurate it was. Instead we were most impressed by the new Bing 'quick card' feature. All of the results in each image above are all part of Bing's own database, and tapping on the top few results brings up a ton of information about the product. We tested this with the PlayStation One copy of Tekken 3 and were shocked by the truckloads of details the quick card result included.

In the About pivot alone the card showed: the cover art, the average price, a short description, the video game console, the overall rating, the graphics rating, the sound rating, the enjoyment rating, the replay value rating, the documentation rating, the ESRB rating, the genre, the game's style, themes, original release date, the developer, the publisher, control input method, what's included in the package, the UPC, what hardware is supported, languages supported, release country of this copy, tech support contacts, and a basic overview of the game's controls. All of this for a game released 13 years ago on a gaming console that has already seen two successors. Plus many other games, DVDs, CDs also include the same amount of information. Besides the About pivot, there's the Reviews pivot which beams in critiques from users and press, and finally the Prices pivot which shows a collection of well-known online stores (Amazon) as well as more obscure ones (vpgames.com).

In the end, has Bing Vision passed the Garage Sale test? We'd say yes...by a lot. Not only is the scanning procedure easy, fast and simple you're also getting a huge amount of information within seconds. If that's not a killer feature then we don't know what is.

A Detailed Look at Revealed Windows Phones

After breaking the story earlier today, we've been closely scrutinizing the video from WPC 2011 in which new Windows Phones were revealed. Our best look was at the mysterious Samsung Windows Phone which got a nice close-up shot as it was being gloated about. We also got a few good shots of the Fujitsu and the ZTE. So we carefully took a few screenshots and did our best with them to figure out exactly what these devices could be like. Join us past the break for an in-depth look at what to expect from tomrrow's phones today!

The first image is one that shows just how thin the device is. Doing a quick duplicate-what-he-was-doing-by-using-a-mirror test, this Mango device appears to be thinner than the Samsung Focus. That's hardly a surprise if this phone really does turn out to be a replica of the Galaxy S II, which measures 8.7mm at its thinnest point.

This second shot shows the Samsung device being held up near the other three devices from a wider angle. Assuming that the Samsung is roughly the same distance away from the camera as the others, it appears that the device has the largest screen. Once again if rumors come true, the display will likely be the same 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus from its Android cousin.

The next device is the Acer handset and we've photoshopped the dummy picture of the Acer W4 alongside it. When we first saw the device we just assumed it was the W4, but after comparing the two it's possible they are different--the model shown today appears less rounded at the top and bottom Or it's likely the design has changed since the W4 appeared as a fake model. The phone still appears plasticky to the touch and therefore a little cheap meaning this could very well be a midrange handset. We won't know until we get a peek at what's under the hood.

Then there's the Fujitsu device, which looks like the most plastic anyone could ever fit onto a smartphone. Still, it's touted as being waterproof and seems to be a quite lean device, so they could have done worse. The device itself is a rectangular slab that looks pretty similar to the Nokia N8 to us. That's all we know at the moment about this one.

Finally, moving on to the ZTE handset, we can see that it's a fair bit chubbier than the other phones but the quality of materials seems better. The back appears to be soft touch while the sides look like aluminium or at least coated plastic. We really do like the overall look of the device, except for the over eager Windows Phone branding on front and back.

Are you excited about any of these phones? Personally we're extremely excited to see the new Samsung device, but the ZTE handset doesn't look too shabby either. Tell us your picks in the comments below!

How to Fix Threads in Mango: A Concept

One of the most frequent complaints we've seen in most of the articles from press with the new Mango preview build is the confusing implementation of Threads. After giving it some thought, we realized that we actually agreed; Threads in its current incarnation seems overly complex and requires a few too many taps to jump between methods of messaging and thus hampers the potential efficient use. So we've come up with a solution in the form of the infographic you see above.

Read it, ogle the pictures, and then tell us what you think!

Did Apple Violate Microsoft's Camera Viewfinder Patent?

As much as we like to rag on Maple and their Eye Devices, we also like to keep things civilized (protip: sarcasm is your greatest weapon). Of course we can't say the same for Microsoft's lawyers, who are probably digging around through mountains of paperwork right now to see if they can pursue a case against their bitter rival.

In case you haven't heard, iOS 5 was announced last Monday to the world and people noticed a lot of..."borrowed" features. A majority of the lending seems to have come from Android (notifications), some copied Eye OS's own Jailbreak developers (Wi-Fi Sync), but there are also some noticeable Windows Phone imitations found in the tech giant's latest software update.

So what exactly did Maple rip off to receive potential scorn from Microsoft? Well it looks like Maple decided to borrow one of Windows Phone's most prominently advertised features: the integrated viewfinder. It's the feature where you take a picture, the picture preview slides to the left of the screen leaving some of it visible, and then swiping from left-to-right to see your most recent pictures. If those words aren't clicking in your head, watch the Windows Phone "Skydiver" ad above and you'll see what we mean. After you're done with that, take a look at the iOS 5 video below Redmond Pie took of the imitated feature.



See what we mean? But you may respond, "everyone in the tech industry rips each other off! No one actually owns any of the features they use." For the most part that would be true, but Microsoft actually does own a patent entitled "Integrated Viewfinder and Digital Media" which was filed in February 2010 and it pretty much covers all of the bases. Here's a quick description of the patent:

A user interface can display active and passive content. For example, a camera viewfinder image can be displayed on a screen, as part of a strip, concatenated with one or more other images, for example, images that were previously taken with the camera. A user can cause the viewfinder image and the other images to move together across the screen. This can allow a user to easily examine the other images and the viewfinder image without, for example, switching between different screens in a user interface. Media captured with a device can be associated with a media category by positioning a user interface element near one or more other elements associated with the category.

There are more claims which the patent specifies ownership over, and it looks like Apple may have been caught red-handed here. So do we think Microsoft is going to sue Apple over this? Frankly, no. They certainly could if they wanted to, but Apple owns at least one patent (but probably many more) that Microsoft is in violation of and if they did meet in court it would most likely only result in a stalemate. Why do you think Apple and Microsoft almost never sue each other? They've been stealing from each other since the 1980s!

But then again this is a very specific patent and it is meant to protect their ownership of its implementation, which really is the most advertised feature of Windows Phone 7 right now. Microsoft could very well pursue this if only to temporarily stop Apple from using the feature in iOS 5 (it's been done before) or to at least request Apple to not advertise it. It'll be interesting to see where this goes from here and certainly gives us a lot to think about when it comes to technology patents. To read more claims applied to the patent, visit the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) link in the source below.

Via: Redmond Pie
Source: United States Patent & Trademark Office

Windows Phone Mango Emulator Hands-On: Marketplace, Zune, Voice to Text, and More

You read Part 1 of our hands-on with the Windows Phone Mango emulator yesterday where we talked about Bing's new moves, Local Scout's unique take on location, and turn-by-turn navigation's ease of use. Are you ready for more? Then join us after the break for more hands-on details about new changes in the Marketplace, added Zune features, the industry-setting voice-to-text feature, and more!

Marketplace

Since the launch of Windows Phone 7, the Marketplace has been an issue for both developers and users. The Search functionality accessed the entire Marketplace catalog and so results would come up for music when you may have been really searching for an app. NoDo took steps to improve this by adding some context-sensitive searching that didn't require any major code to be rewritten, but the context-sensitive search was still not very intuitive. Luckily Microsoft has taken some needed (and obvious) measures to change that with Mango and now Marketplace search is completely filtered by pivots for 'Apps+Games', 'Music' and 'Podcasts' (we'll come back to that last one). It works just as you imagined and is a big improvement over the current mess in the Marketplace.

Another area of improvement are the actual Marketplace results, which will now show you much more information than before. Mango has managed to squeeze in the app title, developer, price, and rating into that list of search results and we also think this was a long overdue but well-executed feature. Speaking of Marketplace search, when you start to type in the search field it will provide suggestions to what you're looking for just like Bing search does.

Finally, apps and games listed in the Marketplace now feature vastly expanded information pages once you tap on a list item. The new app information pages are broken down into four pivots: Details, Reviews, Screenshots and Related. We were never exactly fond of Microsoft's single page approach to apps in the Marketplace so seeing each important element sectioned off and given special attention was something we really enjoyed seeing. For music though, nothing has really changed: when you tap on a song or album result you get the same list of songs and album art along with pricing info and a review (if available).

Zune

Speaking of music, we managed to find our way into the Zune player (not the hub). Sadly however, it wasn't letting us login through our Live account so we weren't allowed to stream any music from the Marketplace and therefore couldn't see the new redesigned Zune playback controls for ourselves. But we still were able to sneak into those stylish Artist pages and we noticed quite a few changes. The big new addition is the fact that Mango includes a new section sandwiched in between the artists' biography and albums: Related. This shows you a list of double-wide tiles of other artists that are similar in style or genre. We always loved Zune's recommendation engine in the desktop software and it has been reproduced and pleasantly simplified here. Another nice addition is that Mango will now slightly tone down the opacity of a background artist picture, making it darker. This should be helpful to anyone who had trouble navigating the Artist pages thanks to a bright default background that made the white Metro text nearly impossible to read.

Podcasts

Music is all well and good, but everybody knows that technology nerds like us love podcasts right? Right. Which is exactly why Microsoft has answered our cries for an on-device podcast management solution similar to the stellar implementation in the Zune HD with Mango's new podcast features. Like we mentioned before, Podcasts now have their own dedicated section in Marketplace search results and tapping on a podcast will bring up a panorama of two panes: 'Episodes' and 'Overview'. Obviously, overview is a quick synopsis of what the series is and episodes is the list of podcasts.

You also have the option to subscribe to the podcast from the same screen, thanks to the options in the appbar below. You can also customize the series settings on-device now, which is great if you don't want to download too many episodes at once from your device. Of course if you're afraid of that kind of commitment you always have the option do download an individual episode and stop there.

Voice-To-Text

Music, apps, and podcasts are great strengths of Mango but let's change gears and talk about a feature more practical in people's day-to-day lives: voice-to-text. This is another area where Microsoft has set its sights on evening the playing field with Google's Android feature set and for the most part they seem to have succeeded -- we'll get to where it still needs work later.

First let's talk about how it works: say you're driving your car or you're working out on a treadmill and listening to some music on your Windows Phone. Suddenly you get a new text message and if you were on Android you'd have to open the message by hand and read it, but obviously you shouldn't look away from the road and it's a little tricky to focus on your phone while running on a simulated incline. Well Microsoft has thought of these scenarios and their voice-to-text feature is completely idiot-proof. When the phone receives a new message, a voice will ask you if you'd like it to be read and if you say yes it will actually read the entire message to you. Then you can choose to ignore or respond, and if you do respond the voice will ask you to speak your message into the microphone when the tone goes off. You say your message, the voice will read it back to you, you make sure it's what you want and then you're good to go.

We couldn't simulate that whole scenario in the emulator because we obviously couldn't receive texts, but we did get our hands on the actual process of converting voice-to-text for a text message. And it works! Pretty well too, as we typically didn't even need to retry our messages. Oh, and in case you thought we didn't check it: if you swear, the phone will recognize it and display it as those hysterical broken symbols (example: $^%*).

Voice-to-text isn't just limited to texts either, you can also use it in Bing searches (you can already in NoDo) and other areas...but not everywhere. Which is exactly our main issue with voice-to-text in this beta build. Android's voice-to-text is a button built into the software keyboard, meaning the feature is available across the entire operating system; it isn't for Mango. Voice-to-text is a great feature and Microsoft has executed it well, but we really hope they plan to expand it to more areas (preferably every area) in the OS.

Other Features

• App searching is now included in the Mango app list so you can quickly and easily search for apps on the phone and leap directly into a Marketplace search.
• We already know a lot about Internet Explorer 9 but we've included some screenshots of the new interface anyway and exactly what options are now available in the appbar. One small change we noticed was that Favorites and History are now separate items in the appbar when before they were part of the same 'favorites menu'. Also, IE9's address bar doubles as a Bing search bar just like before, but now you get search suggestions as you type.
• The master volume controls have changed in Mango and while not drastically different, we definitely dig the more Metro look.
• Despite working, multitasking was extremely limited in this build...which was probably due to the fact that Microsoft said the feature wasn't even enabled in the emulator.
• We spotted the new Background Tasks options in the settings menu but sadly we couldn't manage any apps that didn't have multitasking right?
• The Camera app has seen a few tweaks too. First of all there's now a new software shutter button, so Microsoft has given two options for amateur photographers: software shutter or hardware shutter button. Another addition is a new 'auto-fix' feature which can be applied to saved pictures but we couldn't test it out. Finally, here's the big one: the camera can now remember your settings! At least we think it can--so far the only camera setting we have available is the camera flash but it did save the setting after we changed it, backed out of the app, and reopened it.

Well we're exhausted. We hope this has been a pretty worthwhile Memorial Day present for all of you curious Windows Phone fanatics. Now remember, anything we've talked about here and in Part 1 of our hands-on can and most likely will change over the coming months. Some changes will be small tweak, others could be gigantic redesigns but for the most part this should give all of you an idea for what to expect when Mango launches this Fall. So feel free to get a little excited by what you've seen here. Just a little.

If you haven't read Part 1 of our hands-on with the Windows Phone Mango Emulator, you're missing out! We talked about tons of new Bing features, our take on Local Scout, and the drool-worthy navigation. So what are you waiting for? Read it here!