In another attempt by Microsoft to keep up with Apple’s iPhone they have announced and showed off the new Windows Phone 7 software upgrade that has been christened with the name of Mango(and is the 7.1 version). It won’t be for sale until this coming fall, but the new features have already been revealed.
Microsoft has stated that their mission and ultimate goal has been to provide users with a phone that is really smarter and simpler to use. Even though the new phone will comes with 500 fresh features it still remains easy to use. They have integrated the multitasking feature which now allows to run two applications at a time which is something that couldn’t be done before.
A lot of expectation has been created by Microsoft alone because they managed to organize an event where media was invited to attend just to find that the video feed on the phone was not loading. Perhaps this was an imitation of Steve Jobs with his failed attempt to connect to a wireless network with the iPhone while on a live presentation.
The phone’s default browser is the latest version of Internet Explorer 9. One of the new applications is Local Scout which allows the user to search the nearby places such as bars, stores, and restaurants. This search is performed based on the user’s location.
The Mango phone comes with one single inbox that allows the user to link different e-mail accounts and received everything in the same box. Also with this phone it will be possible to use the same conversation box to shift from one chat to the other; that means that the user might be using Windows Messenger to chat with someone, but will be able to shift to a conversation being held on Facebook chat all in one conversation.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=OP30F3ZxTmw
The truth is that Microsoft has a long way to go in order to gain more users; recent statistics have shown that in the first four months of the year 100 million smartphones were sold all around the world and only 1.6 million of those phones were Windows 7. That is less than 1% of the market which compared to Apple’s 16.8% shows that there is still a lot to be done. Microsoft has reached out to other mobile phone giants such as Nokia and it was announced that Nokia will be using Windows as the software in its phones later on this year.
It is known that Android phones have done a lot better in the salvage mobile market and Microsoft is still struggling to become popular, but the consumers seem to just not like its phones. They don’t seem to understand what the users are really looking for and that’s what has marked their almost failure in the market. Even though they had made clear that the Mango phone comes with new features, they still haven’t announced how they plan on undertaking their biggest competitors. The features surely sound new – for Windows – but they are no different than those already offered by Apple and Google.
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