After the Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta was released yesterday, we expected nothing less than for both developers and aficionados alike to get their hands on the emulator and find unannounced features. Yes, first of all the developer tools beta does state it is Windows Phone 7.1, but that’s only temporary, Windows Phone 7.5 is the codenamed Mango update coming later this year. It’s easy to figure out that the developer tools are tagged at 7.1 because they do not contain everything from final build (7.5). Regardless, the Internet is buzzing with plenty of other features that have been discovered both via the developer tools emulator, and hands-on time after the event that took place yesterday. With the May 24th event come and gone, the Mango goodness continues:
- There will be “new ways for us to do multi-player” in the Games Hub (more information coming later this year)
- Voice commands will add music controls and ability to open a text message
Windows Phone 7 Mango Hands-On
- Support for Hotmail birthday calendars
- Support for multiple Windows Live calendar subscriptions
Neowin.net
- Pin Picture Hub albums (including from Facebook/Windows Live) to start screen
- Pictures Hub has tagging for uploading to Facebook/Windows Live, also uses face recognition to easily recognize people for you
Windows Phone Mango demo – Pictures pin and tag
- Bing Vision also translates languages using the camera
Windows Phone Mango and Bing Vision hands-on
- To-do list calendar support
Windows Phone 7 “Mango” – evento em São Paulo – video 1
- The Marketplace Hub design is changing to a pivot style and suggestions while searching
- MP3 Audio Playback now has the controls at the top and they have a repeat and shuffle to support playlist features
- Video player interface now has a new software button that stretches the video to fit the screen
- HTML 5 Audio Playback support will continue to work after you are back at the start screen. If you use the volume rocker you will see the new pop-down audio control with bigger buttons
- Dedicated search pivot for images added to Bing Search results
- Photos are now sorted into “Albums” instead of “ALL” and there is a camera button in the choose picture screen
- Each contact now has a history pivot which shows communication history
Windows Phone “Mango” Emulator Hidden Features Revealed
- Emotion smilies in texts will now show up as full Emoticons
Windows Phone Mango Brings New Emoticons To Text Messages
The folks over at xda-developers have been peeling back the developer tools (7.1) emulator and listing all their findings that haven’t been announced yet either. Of course, their list is being populated as they find new features, hopefully we will be able to keep up with our own list of Mango features. Be sure to check out our list to keep updated and fresh on all the features! As Mango approaches, hopefully Microsoft will give everyone an entire list of the over 500 features they have stated will be included in the update.
Music Hub:
- You can create and save playlists
- There’s a “related artists” and bio under the artist tab, great for discovering music
- You can’t “heart” songs (at least in the emulator)
Bing & Maps:
- You can show traffic on maps
- It’s now possible to scroll the mini-map while the text directions are on-screen
- Bing Audio recognizes music and clicking on the result will take you to the Zune Marketplace
- You can now unlock the phone using the search button, apparently
- If you search for something on Bing that has an application equivalent it will show you a link to the application within Bing
- The “my location” icon now has the same colour as the OS theme
Keyboard:
- Now corrects short word misspellings such as ar -> at, fir-> for and br-> be
- Now corrects it if you press a letter instead of space between two words e.g. it will suggest “I’m about” if you type imnabout or imnaboit, and will suggest “How are you” if you type “hownarebyou”
- Also corrects common misspellings like Profesional -> Professional
- Tries to predict next word (as shown at 24th May event), e.g. If you type I, then “tr”, it will suggest “tried”, whereas in WP7 it will suggest nothing
IE9:
- Websites render more accurately
- Websites can use GPS data for location
- Bing suggestions now appear when typing a search in IE as well
- Tab animation has changed very subtly
Camera:
- A software camera button is available
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