Mango review round-up

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Some major websites updated their Windows Phone 7.5 Mango reviews.  Here is a round-up of their impressions:

Thisismynext reports:

imageWindows Phone remains a breath of fresh air in an otherwise-entrenched mobile landscape. It’s fun to use in a way that iOS and Android are — to put it bluntly — not. Should “fun” be a deciding factor in a device that’s designed to keep you productive on the road? Yes, I’d argue it should; an entertaining, refreshing, visually-engaging user experience always keeps the phone in your hand, getting stuff done.

Sure, this is just a mild evolution of a platform that launched a year ago, but Microsoft has evolved it in all of the most important ways. By all appearances, they’re listening and they’re acutely aware of where the pain points lie. For the average user, I don’t think there are any showstoppers here anymore — the framework has now been fleshed out in full, and it’s up to third-party developers to recognize the opportunity and take advantage. There are still problems, of course — Mango is far from perfect — but this is the first version of Windows Phone that I can recommend without an asterisk.

With iOS 5 and Ice Cream Sandwich both around the corner, this platform still has an enormous uphill battle to climb to carve out its stake of the market — and with Microsoft’s lack of support for dual-core processors and LTE, they’re not going to win any all-out spec wars. But still, at no point while using this year-old hardware did I feel encumbered or out-of-date — in fact, I usually felt like the software was taking better advantage of the available processing power than the much more muscular Android handsets I’ve been testing over the last few months. Put simply, regardless of your preconceptions, Windows Phone finally deserves an honest look the next time you’re ready to buy a phone — particularly as we start to see new devices come to market over the next few weeks.

Gizmodo concludes:

imageIf you don’t want an iPhone, this is basically the only real option, unless you already know you want Android. Like, for non-nerds, this is the only thing I’d tell them to buy if they don’t want an iPhone. It’s not better than iOS, not yet. But it’s the closest. And it’s legitimately different and excellent.

That said! I’d wait to see the shithot secound round of new phones (like from Nokia) first, though, since I don’t really think any of the current Windows Phones are mindblowing. Windows Phone may be second best, but frankly, for the first time in a long time, that’s good enough.

Engadget says:

imageSteve Ballmer said it himself — Windows Phones sales haven’t exactly been stellar. And it’s not exactly the biggest surprise, considering the type of rebuilding phase Microsoft’s mobile OS has gone through over the last few years. Swapping a platform used by millions with something more "youthful and fresh" isn’t going to earn customers and praise overnight, especially when it’s a brand new ecosystem that has no dev support or track record (besides Redmond’s already laughable reputation). We’ve said before that Mango is the OS that should’ve come out last year to give Windows Phone relevance in the market, and it’s true — but it’s understandable that the company was nowhere near ready to push such a sophisticated platform out. There just wasn’t enough time. But it’s a much different landscape now for Windows Phone, and Mango is a better fit than its predecessor. The major update took less than a year to make it out, an impressive feat for the overhaul that was involved. Additionally, the Marketplace now supports 30,000 apps and is growing at an explosive pace which will likely speed up as the platform becomes more popular and developer-friendly.
While Windows Phone still needs a glass of water to get rid of a few hiccups — and let’s face it, every mobile OS has plenty of their own — it ironed out a lot of the wrinkles from earlier versions and made it a much more feature-laden, user-friendly experience. With Mango, WP7 has caught up with Android and iOS in nearly every way, and in some areas it’s even surpassed the other two in functionality. Despite a grim first year, the bright future of Windows Phone is forcing Ballmer to wear shades.

So overall positive reviews, which we hope trickle down to buyers over the next few weeks to months.

How do our readers, who have just upgraded to Mango themselves, found the updates OS? Let us know below.

More about the topics: mango, software, update, windows phone 7.5

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