Mango shows Microsoft still has the taste for smartphone success

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AppId is over the quota

Steve Jobs famously criticised Microsoft for having no taste and no culture. Windows Phone 7.5, the latest version of Microsoft's operating system for mobile phones, is a revolutionary product for its parent company because it has both in spades. The worry is that Microsoft has delivered this lovely creation a little too late.

As a piece of visual design, the operating system also known as Mango makes the iPhone's bubble-inspired home screen graphics look tired and out of date. The style is pared back, letting the content, drawn in from the myriad of online sources that now figure in our daily lives, do the talking. Applications each inhabit a simple red square, or "live tile" on a black screen. When customised they earn their name and truly come to life, which is where the culture comes in.

The level to which a select group of the best social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn – have been woven into the functions on Mango goes well beyond what was available on its predecessor (Windows Phone 7), and arguably well beyond what Apple's iPhone and Google's Android can offer.

Punch in your Facebook and Twitter coordinates, and the software merges them with your address book to create a profile for each contact, with their latest photos, status updates and tweets. Pin that person's tile to your home screen, and each update feeds into the little square.

The most recent photos taken on your phone are also displayed in their own double sized tile. And the home screen can, unlike many other operating systems, display multiple tiles from a single application – one for each item you are bidding for on Ebay, or the weather in a handful of cities.

The messaging has caught up with iPhone. A conversation that might begin on Facebook chat but then moves to text messaging or Windows Live Messenger – the Microsoft instant messaging service – now appears on screen in a single thread.

Where the operating system does fail to impress is with voice recognition. Mango incorporates it, for example to compose an email. But "Want you meet camera" is not a very usable approximation of "Want to meet tomorrow".

Voice commands are not just a diverting new trick. They are the future for smartphones. Using virtual keypads on a tiny touch screen is life sapping, and impossible to do while walking. But the trusty buttons of a qwerty keyboard are just not sexy enough to be added to the iPhone. So Apple is doing its level best to get us using Siri, its own voice service, which has surprised users with its accuracy. Microsoft has some catching up to do here.

And it will make every effort to catch up. The software behemoth is not just fighting for a nice sideline, it is fighting for control of the mass market computer. As mobile connected devices become cleverer and are touched by millions more fingers than have ever typed on a PC keyboard, the importance of the laptop or desktop computer will fade and with it Microsoft's influence.

There is a long battle ahead. Research firm IDC says Windows operating systems were on just 2% of phones sold worldwide in the first half of this year, down from 13% in 2008. Back then, Android's share was 0%. In three years it has become the best seller, with 42%. BlackBerry is still significant, and Apple's iOS is at 19%.

The first Nokia handsets to use Windows will be unveiled in London next week. Nokia still sells more "feature" phones than anyone else, but it sold just 15% of smartphones in the summer, down from 33% in 2010. Its decision to abandon Symbian left it unable to compete for most of this year. The alliance with Microsoft is clearly make or break, and their target as they attempt to rise up the ranks will be Android.

Research In Motion, maker of BlackBerry, will continue to chase its corporate market. Apple will remain the premium brand for now. Which will leave Microsoft and Google slugging it out for dominance of the cheaper, mass market handsets.

Where Google may have the edge is control over handset design. It is buying Motorola, possibly just for the patents needed to protect Android against litigation, or possibly to create better phones. Nokia and Microsoft are merely in an alliance, but they have size, marketing firepower, relationships with networks and experience on their side. Nokia won its battle for dominance of the mass market against Motorola at the end of the 1990s, and still sells more basic feature phones than anyone else. Microsoft knows a lot more about selling operating systems than Google, albeit on PCs. Its creator may be a fading force, but Mango shows Microsoft still has the taste for success.

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Windows phone ' Mango ' released production.

Mango, cut into slices. If Microsoft can get people to buy five a day ... Photo: Helen Rimell

Microsoft have logged off the code for the "Mango" version of its Windows phone operating system-officially, the code has had the RTM (release to manufacturing)- according to Windows Team Blog.

There, explains Terry Myerson, Corporate Vice-President at the Windows phone team (basically the daily manager) that "This marks the point in the development process where we hand-code to our handset and mobile operator partners to optimize the Mango to your phone and network configurations."

(See our previous coverage on Windows phone Mango for an idea of what this includes.)

The good news: this is a bit ahead of where it had been expected to be (and probably miles better than the original release of Windows phone, which got caught up in internal struggles within the entertainment and device division of Kin-project Pink, from $ 500 m acquisition of danger-and rewrite of the Windows Mobile).

The bad news: it will be called "Windows phone 7.5". We wanted Mango. We will stick with that for now.

So it is the end-July, and the code is going out now, so that they have misunderstood the entire August ... so that should mean release in September, right? Unfortunately, not. Involved in getting the phone code quite complicated dance includes an extra layer, as you did with the release of Windows OS to OEM PC makers: air carriers.

So to get the Mango in people's hands (or retailers ' stores) processes to navigate are:

• handset makers have to test the Mango against their new design to ensure that the code runs really well on their systems

• handset makers have to test the Mango against their old design to make sure the code does not cause devastating thing to happen and that in fact only good things will happen-not even indifferent this worked perfectly with the first update to Windows phone ("pre-NoDo" update), which created some LG phones when it rolled out in April.

• handset makers (like Nokiawill include) must take their phones to carriers and allow them to test them against their networks. All airlines insist on this as a condition for phones will on your network-especially new phones it is the same for Apple. (New iPhones sent to airlines in sealed boxes software so can be tested.)

• If everything is hunky dory, so the airlines who will leave the handset makers. This will depend on the course of the slowest airline to respond in General.

This year there is a greater problem but: lots of Android phones and of course the new iPhones-expected in September-which is in the queue in front of Windows phone Mango phones. It is potentially a traffic jam that will hold things up.

This means generally that you should not expect Mango update to be rolled out, or the new Windows phones (including Nokia's Sea Ray-no doubt you can find a more interesting name, such as N9487) appears before October.

Which is what I have tell you since February, at least with regard to Nokia.

You can also consider fully how Mango would fare in the new OS to the world that it would be articulated. Many said that Windows phone wasn't competitive when first released (no cut + Paste and various other things). Mango is a great improvement. Windows Team blog notes that it will have threading to bring conversations with an individual across multiple connections (IM, email, text) in a single view; multitasking; and Internet Explorer 9. No words on Flash.

The question is whether it will be sufficient, when Apple's iOS 5 is released, and whether there will be the next version of Android code name Ice Cream Sandwiches-available by then. There are expected to have componnents such as face detection, a new app launcher, USB host (for a game controller), and simpler updates. Because Androids messages system is just about perfect, but (in my opinion) its Gingerbread keyboard system is grim perhaps UI improvements will be there.

Inapplicable, Mango is not going to have a soft landing.

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