Microsoft’s New OS Mango Finally Catching up with the Crowd

During their Microsoft’s MIX ‘11 conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft announced their upcoming release of Mango, the new Windows Phone OS. Mango is expected this fall. Mango will be Microsoft’s offering to finally compete with the more robust operating systems currently dominating the market – finally bringing features already popular in the market like multitasking.

New Features

• Multitasking: Finally. Even when Windows Phone 7 was released last year multitasking was already available in the competitive market space, and yet Microsoft’s new OS lacked the feature. Finally in fall of this year MS will bring the feature to its users. The new multitasking feature will be able to swap between native and web apps, including multitasking within Spotify, a popular new music streaming app.
• Apps: Developers will be able to use the phone’s hardware features within apps, as they will have access to the camera, accelerometer, Live Tiles, contacts, calendar, and interface controls. Developers will be able to drill-down within features, including being able to change the color of the Tiles.
• Improved Makerplace Search: The new Marketplace Search update allows for filtering in any given search query, as opposed to the apps, music and podcasts being returned in a jumbled pile.
• New Tools and APIs: These new tools and APIs will be rolled out in May, and will include new emulator abilities, including accelerometer support with a 3D emulator and a location simulation for testing GPS apps. The new total of APIs will be 1,500, which should translate into better performance with things like smoother scrolling.

With Microsoft’s 38,000 developers, 13,000 apps, and 1.5 million downloads of free dev tools, it plans on having high-profile application migrate to the OS, including the likes of Angry Birds, Spotify, Skype, Amazon Shopping, Kik Messenger, Layar, and Qantas.