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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Google +: Tweet smell of success | Dan Gillmor

A Twitter user. Google + enjoy opening its platform to third-party developers that Twitter has. Photo: Jonathan Hordle/Rex features

It is a month ago Google launched its non-Facebook and non-Twitter social network. Despite some signs of a slowdown in growth – and some difficult issues around ease of use and terms of Service-there seems little doubt that Google has created something that could stand the test of time.

More than 20 million people have signed up with G + (my shorthand to Google +) already. There is a small fraction of the bases are using Facebook and Twitter, but for a month in existence, it is a notable figure (although one news report suggests that people use it less, on a per capita basis, than when they first joined).

I use it more. Although this service is still in "beta" status, the Google account, it's already compelling – like Facebook and Twitter have been compelling places to visit for college students (and many others) in recent years. Why? Former Chairman of MySpace (remember MySpace?) wrote in this week, "G + is about people and the community. It is a celebration of our existence … "

I would not go so far, but I would say that there is much to be desired about the service. As I noted in a post a day after G + launched, the term Google team a number of things that have been waiting competition – the need for more robust control and privacy for users who have been waiting for Facebook people, and a more user-friendly way to post short thoughts and have conversations around those who have been waiting for Twitter.

Some observers believe Twitter is more at risk than Facebook, and there can be true. I certainly spending less time with Twitter, but I would dream of quitting completely. Service 140-characters are still leagues better for hearing and sorting through "breaking news", which I placed in quotation marks, because so much of what is new on Twitter is unverified. In addition, third-party tools makes Twitter very useful for, among many other things, keep track of certain people links to what they consider important.

But Twitter has to acknowledge its weakness, and not only because G + is more flexible in the way it can be used. It took less than four weeks to have more followers on G + than I've accumulated on Twitter for more than four years. This is now not entirely shocking: Twitter started from a user base of zero, while Google + started from a base of hundreds of millions of Google search users. But the number of followers is just a number. What is most remarkable is the level of engagement I experience with the people who read what I write. It is not uncommon to see dozens of comments on short postings I publish on G +, one greater than answer generated on Twitter, where the conversation is much more difficult to follow in any case, the order of magnitude.

Google + need to copy the Twitter in a decisive manner: by opening its own data and conversations to third-party developers, because Web browsers is still not robust enough for the kind of thing many of us want to do with the service. For example it is easy enough to put a few people in circles – G + method for the creation of groups to which you want to follow – but organize them when you have more than a few are very clumsy with the current system.

Google + leaders also are struggling with problems of identity – not yours, but the identities of the users. In the first instance permitted Google people to sign up with pseudonyms and create accounts for organizations. This violated the terms of Service, but in several weeks, Google did not respond, and when it did, it turned to unilaterally from certain accounts. The company must allow both pseudonymous and organization accounts, but only the latter seems to be on the road, according to public opinions.

I am also disappointed by what I've learned about the service's security. Although communications are encrypted, was Google's answers to my questions about the Government spying on users are not encouraging. The company does not dispute that: one) it can record users ' text and video conversations, even when they are, in theory, shared by only two people; and (b)), it would give government agencies the ability to tap these conversations. Google has to abide by the law, and it has a track record of fire resisting exaggerated the Government's efforts to spy on us citizens.

The company may have created an architecture that is designed to ensure real security, but chose otherwise. Given its increasing problems with the Government, this is not much of a surprise, I suppose. I had hoped, however, Google + can be an excellent tool for dissidents in dictatorships, and it is a pity that it chose otherwise.

And as noted several weeks ago, I am not entirely sanguine, at least to put more of my communications to the Web sites I do not control. Google + has become an almost essential part of my day. I get great value out of it, but I would be careful not to let it be a dependency.

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