Microsoft’s Mango is unexpectedly sweet

Added by Editor on 8 August 2011.
Saved under Alistair Fairweather, Opinion, Top
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[By Alistair Fairweather]

I’m not the biggest fan of Microsoft. I’ve made that pretty clear over the years. The company has spent a decade in various degrees of stagnation, largely thanks to keeping Uncle Fester’s evil twin as its CEO. It has made a string of expensive and stupid acquisitions, including buying profit-less Skype for US$8,5bn and pumping a reported $1bn into an ailing Nokia in an attempt to buy its way into a market in which it has proved too inept to make its own way.

And it has let the new Gang of Four (Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook) colonise all the vibrant new markets from mobile phones and tablets through to search and social media. After two decades of almost complete dominance in the realms of software, Microsoft now looks like a bit of a lame duck.

And so when I heard about Windows Phone 7, it was all I could do to stifle a yawn. “Wow,” I thought, “so Microsoft has finally caught up with the iPhone circa 2007. Pity it’s 2011.” (I’m a lot more sarcastic in my head than I am out loud.) I’ve never seen a Microsoft mobile device that impressed me in the least bit. Its Windows CE devices were just depressingly bad — at least the ones I saw and played with anyway.

And so when I picked up Chris Rawlinson’s new Samsung Focus running Windows Phone 7 “Mango” — the latest version of the operating system — I wasn’t expecting much. I’m an iPhone guy, and a snob, and (as I’ve said) I have pretty clear feelings about M$oft.

The interface is much slicker and more beautiful than any of the videos I’d watched led me to believe. Samsung’s beautiful Amoled screen certainly helps. It seems a little less sharp than the iPhone’s retina display, but the colours are incredibly vivid. Having grown up under the yoke of Microsoft’s trademark interface design ethos (that is, difficult, fiddly, clumsy and flat), I was expecting Mango to be more of the same. It’s not. Intuitive, fluid, immersive and reactive — this is a great user experience. It’s quite different from the iPhone, but for once “different” doesn’t just mean “we changed it so we wouldn’t get sued” or, even worse, “crap and poorly thought out”.

The Samsung Focus

I particularly enjoyed the active panels on the home screen, and the way social media and your contacts list are so neatly interwoven. The interface isn’t just a product of care and thought, but of passion and joy — things that have lacked in so many of Microsoft’s core products for years.

And so, I am eating humble pie. Microsoft, I will stop jeering at your failure with the aborted Kin, and at the crapness of Windows CE. Your mobile team has really impressed me, and that takes a lot.

Whether Mango will be enough to reverse the stranglehold that Android, Research in Motion and Apple have on the market is another question. It would tragically ironic if Microsoft finally found its mobile mojo two years too late. It’s going to have to pump billions into its applications platform in order to get a brand new ecosystem off the ground from a standing start. Without the buy-in of third party developers they are just not going to be able to make any headway.

But the Nokia deal is starting to look a little less foolish. If Nokia’s manufacturing scale can be combined with Mango’s beauty in a pleasing package, then Nokia has a chance to rise from its early grave. The problem is that both Nokia and Microsoft will have to spend their way into the market even to be heard. The momentum is not on their side.

Be all that as it may, the Focus is a beautiful device, running a beautiful operating system. I am still happy with my iPhone, but I can imagine this bad boy is a lot of people’s idea of heaven.

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  • Joel Job

    The six most important words in Leadership: “I admit I made a mistake.”

  • WP7

    Great article. This is why the press and the carriers should give WP7.5 the chance it deserves because it is actually a very nice OS, well though out, elegant, smooth and fast, and different in approach to the other established systems. With some nice hardware from Nokia and Samsung, I think it’s a winner – certainly a pleasant and viable alternative to the iPhone or Android phones.

  • tom lupton

    This does back up what i have always said and that is instead of judging ms on the past actually pick up and use a wp7 because if you do there is no denying it is amazing and a million miles away from MS of old. Now take a look at windows 8 and you will see that although MS has been sleeping a bit of late they have now woken up and have come out swinging.

  • http://twitter.com/thewomble_za Greg Mahlknecht

    It’s crunch time for WP7.  Both Android and iPhone took about a year to gain traction and make a meaningful impact in marketshare, WP7 is doing okay compared to both those OSes since launch (despite all the doom-and-gloom articles you read). Mango comes out pretty close to WP7′s anniversary.   MS’s mobile marketshare has bottomed out at just below 6%, so any increase should be attributable to WP7 sales, now that WM6 has purged itself from the stats.  We’ll soon know all the answers.

  • http://www.facebook.com/rknevhulaudzi Rendani K Nevhulaudzi

    Im using HTC Mozart running Windows Phone 7 and i cannot wait to upgrade to Mango as im addicted to my phone, with 500 new features, integrated Facebook and Twitter, there nothing i can ask more. Windows Phone will rule again, watch the space…

  • Avatar Roku

    Been using Mango developer build for the past month and it is a game changer in my opinion. You’ve got all the functionality and hardware choice of Android in a much smoother, prettier, and reliable package. Apps do not force close constantly, animations & transitions are beautiful & elegant, the new audio/visual/gps search capabilities are brilliant. The home screen comes alive with all of your contacts, photos, and live tile apps. The OS is a joy to use; I especially love the camera app. I’ve been using Mango on a Samsung Focus (last year’s hardware) and it is screaming fast, can’t imagine what the new hardware will be like.

    I have several iOS, Android, webOS and Mango devices in my home and there is no doubt in my mind my next phone will be a Windows Phone. In fact I am so convinced I am going to recommend all of my family and friends make the switch from Android to Windows Phone. I appreciate Android for it’s breadth of functionality, but Windows Phone has caught up and in a much more reliable and elegant package.

  • http://twitter.com/gtroberts GTRoberts

    There’s a very obvious reason while a lot of people think Microsoft has been sleeping… and next to no one takes this into account; its called a ten year long DoJ injunction that absolutely prevented MS from doing anything truly worthwhile.

  • http://twitter.com/thewomble_za Greg Mahlknecht

    Explain?  The injunction has nothing with them being able to release quality products and innovating, which they have been doing.

    No, the real reason people think Microsoft has been sleeping is that they’re ignorant and/or read the wrong news sites.  In the past 10 years MS has grown their product lines from 3 $billion-dollar-revenue (Office, Windows, Windows Server) to 11 $billion-revenue products (+ Xbox, SQL Server, System Center, Exchange, SharePoint, Developer Tools, Dynamics (ERP
    & CRM), Online Advertising).   Only one of those is consumer facing, so out of the last 10 years, the only thing people have been likely to read about in the mainstream tech sites is the Xbox bit.

    You have to remember that no company comes even close to the sheer breadth of products MS offers.  WP7 is an important part of their strategy, but it’s not going to sink the company if it fails.  Should this happen, Nokia might die, but for MS if it becomes a $billion-revenue product, it’ll just be #12.  Less than 8% of its income.

  • Anonymous

    I agree that people are not looking at the spaces where MS is truly innovating, but I think OP was referring to the mobile phone sector specifically.
    You actually hit upon why the injunction prevented MS from doing anything worthwhile with the mobile sector in your own post.  They have had all of the great services you mentioned, but the DOJ injunction prevented them from integrating the services with one another.  They have had some limited integration, but I think you won’t see the whole integrated package until Win8 comes out.

  • http://twitter.com/thewomble_za Greg Mahlknecht

    I had no idea the Injuction had anything directly to do with mobile, if so I stand corrected.  AFAIK there was nothing legal stopping them from bringing WP7 to market years ago, it was just honest failure from the mobile guys to actually get something great out there timeously.  But Ballmer’s restructure over the past few years has made most divisions of the company fire on all cylinders.  Now if only he could do something about marketing.  Like hire a decent marketer.  One would be a good start. :)

  • Simon

    You confuse Windows CE and Windows Mobile. Windows Phone 7 is still based on Windows CE. And that’s a good thing.

  • Anonymous

    Loved the article. WP7 is beautiful, powerful and has a very convenient, intuitive user experience. I think a lot of people won’t give it a chance because they are imagining the old CE days. Hopefully Mango and the Nokia deal will help break those old mindsets. Also, I think when the metro UI hits Windows 8 and XBox people will realize that it’s the same UI as WP7, which may help convince them to give it a shot.

  • Anonymous

    I have to agree. The Android phones I have used and seen my friends use don’t give you that consistent look and feel. many Android apps are bad neighbors and hog the CPU in the background and/or cause crashes. With WP7 the OS and the apps seem seamlessly integrated. In fact, most of the time I don’t even have to leave the start screen, since many apps integrate with the live tiles giving me all the info I need.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=567249596 Jay Oakesey

    Windows phone 7 already is a beautiful peice of kit. A WP7 user since day 1 UK release my HD7 has the feel and wow factor that i-phone brought to the market in 2007 however, it has moved on in ways that now make the other OS look very flat. They haven’t moved on, they still resemble symbian phones which NOKIA have deserted. The static and frankly stale looking icons and over reliance on apps to make the phone come alive makes Windows Phones look truly smart. The Mango update adds all the missing early features whilst adding even more integrated fantastic products that emphasize Microsoft’s superior product catalogue that iOS and Android could only ever dream of; office 365, X-box, 25Gb sky-drive (free), integrated, windows live, messenger, facebook (not an app) and soon to be twitter, linkd-in and more. Zune is a far superior product to i-tunes, I also have an i-pod and its ok in the car, software suck, crashes, stalls and finds it so hard to retrieve album artwork, unlike Zune which seldom struggles to find the images for your albums. WP7 does all this in a completely new and fluid way. The live tiles are a feature that make life very easy; no continual pressing of icons to open apps, swiping and sliding is all you need to do, if you wish to investigate further. They may be in their infancy but, we are promised they will only become more intelligent with further dimensions and depth delivering even more information with the mango update. The customization abilities already are infinite and your homescreen becomes alive with all your own personal life shenanigins; the live tiles tell me who, what and how often the important things in my life are changing, in seconds, it really is awesome! All of this on top of the promised improvements in speach recognition, improved search ( which is FANTASTIC already), integrated sat nav, ie9, improved e-mail and calendar ( which again are already FANTASTIC) are all done with a sleek and polished fluidity that make the phones people centric and easy to use. Bring on the Mango!

  • bbfan

    Yeah. I tried Mango. It ok but not great. There is no single reason to switch. If you buy a new phone and you do not need apps then it’s fine. Also be sure you are ok with other ms services and products. Phone is pretty MS locked. So prepare to install zune , use IE (damm thats terrible) bing (even worse especially if not English). I will stay with my bb thank you.

  • Anonymous

    i believe he meant old versions of windows ce

  • Anonymous

    wait for wp7 nokia.  nokia makes great devices.  samsungs r great too.

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