New Mango Features - Additional Information and Thoughts

Although the previous article provided the screenshots to many new features coming, Travis and Ryan Lowdermilk also gave us some great information on additional features coming that aren’t yet backed up by screenshots.

On their podcast, Travis and Ryan mention “Native Check-Ins” support is coming.  Facebook Places is indicated to have native support, but FourSquare might require a plugin.

Visual Voicemail

• rumored to use the OMTP – Open Mobile Terminal Platform, which is what iOS and Android use.  Nice that Microsoft isn’t reinventing the wheel on this one.

Battery Management

• with the addition of 3^rd party multi-tasking, more battery management will be necessary.  They mention that there should be an additional Battery section under the Settings menu.

WiFi Hotspot Support

• Should be coming with Mango, utilizing Microsoft’s NCSI technology, which is behind the Internet Sharing features within Vista and Windows 7.  Expect this to require individual carrier support, carrier pricing, and to go live on a carrier by carrier basis.

Ryan and Travis indicate they have a slew of additional screenshots, and plan on publishing them on their website and through their Twitter account, @wpdevpodcast.  Make sure you follow them on Twitter to get this information as it becomes available.

Below is some more information provided on the screenshots that you’ve already seen on Pradeep’s article.  Most of these thoughts are provided by Ryan and Travis, and I’ve interjected a few of my thoughts as well as 2 additional screenshots.

Messaging

Facebook chat will be joining the integrated messaging experience along with Windows Live Messenger.  Travis and Ryan state that there is other evidence that AOL Instant Messenger will be joining the mix as well.

The People Hub will show you which services your contacts are currently logged into, and the rumors are that when you try to send them an SMS, an option will pop up asking if you’d like to contact them through the chat service they are currently using and showing as online.

Office Hub

It appears a more logical Office 365 experience and integrated SkyDrive support is coming in Mango.  We see a link to “docs.live.net”, with an option to “open in browser.”  This indicates that you will be able to edit documents in the IE9 Mobile browser.

Games Hub

We see that the Xbox Games Hub is getting a graphical overhaul, bringing a consistency between the Xbox 360, and the Games experience on Windows Phone 7.   We also see an added option called “Automatic Sync”.  Feel free to speculate what that might be syncing.  Hopefully we will be getting some heavily improved online play through Mango.

People Hub

Bringing back a feature that was already available with Windows Mobile 6.x, we now see a group feature.  This allows for sending a text message to a work or family related group, as well as emailing them all at once.  This is something I actually used on WM 6.5, and am glad to see its return.  Travis and Ryan say that they would love to see the ability to view aggregated tweets or facebook updates.  Calling it a “Favorites List”, they love the idea of pinning that to the Start Menu.  I have to agree!

Lockscreen Settings

Here we see that Mango can add Album / Artist art as your lockscreen background.  Although not indicated, hopefully full Zune controls will also be built into the lockscreen.  Also, we see the “never” option for screen time-out, which will hopefully be available for ALL WP7 devices, instead of just certain ones currently.

Via: Windows Phone Dev Podcast