Eldar’s Windows Phone 7.1 Mango Review

Before I even knew this was from Mobile-Review or Eldar, the first thing that struck me is how can anyone review Mango when all the upcoming features (500!) are not yet ready? We were demoed about, what, 20 on Mango Day (May 21) and so there’s at least 400+ stuff to go until Fall. Windows Phone folks stated themselves they’ll be showing us more stuff as the weeks go by. This is like a food critic reviewing the dish when the chef is only just preparing the ingredients.

I don’t know if this mention has been lost in translation (this review is in Russian) but I don’t know if this was clearly noted that Mango as he’s playing with right now is NOT what consumers are getting. It’s not even half of it. I don’t know how much Eldar’s dislike for Nokia affects his opinion of Windows Phone (with so much of Nokia’s interests hedged on Windows Phone success). Just read on.

Keyboard

Something that concerns me is that features we do talk about (keyboard improvements to Mango, next word prediction) are ignored. Eldar states, “Unfortunately, no improvements have been made in the keyboard. This is exactly the same keyboard“.  One the things we heard from MS is that there was a smarter keyboard. I was surprised to hear about keyboard improvements as the keyboard on Windows Phone is absolutely fantastic. It is so very intuitive and I have typed up thousand word long notes with ease on it (Great word prediction, intuitive keyboard adjustments, great use of kb sounds)

Multitasking

They don’t talk about the nitty gritty. Does it affect battery life? Does it affect performance? He just complains that you can’t close apps manually. Andre has talked about multitasking on Windows Phone. It’s quite technical but worth a read.

http://mynokiablog.com/2011/05/24/windows-phone-7-multi-tasking-and-computer-processing-primer/

In his particular comparison, we have a task manager on Android and visual cards (Symbian^3/WebOS/BB Playbook) style. At the moment it does seem that Windows Phone wants to cater make the phone so much easier to use, and part of this was done with trying to get task management out of the user’s hands.

For me, I find myself sometimes unknowingly running lots of apps in the background and when I realise, I have to close down all the others manually for the main one not to lag. I’m not sure precisely what effect having a manual close option would have (would be nice to have it) but the bigger concern is what effect this style of multitasking has on what we value more – performance and battery life.

I know all of my non techy friends don’t get task management. If they are going to close an app, it’s within the app itself. You can do that in Windows Phone, just press “back” within that app.

Phonebook Groups

The slick integration with facebook is very welcome. Putting such importance into a pleasing facebook experience is a smart thing to do. It is an essential thing to do: Some FB stats:

Category: Windows Phone