[sc:mobile-category ]Mango finally was released last week but I have been waiting for it to be deployed to my phone since the 27th.  I’m not a patient man for these kinds of things so doing a quick search provided me with a way to stop waiting and install the update NOW .

NOTE: I’m not going to go in to great detail on some of the new features of Mango (like multitasking) as I haven’t had it long enough to say to much, instead this article will focus on what I have found so far as I’ve had it for 2 days.

The Update

The instructions are pretty straight forwards, turn off the cell and Wi-Fi radios, connect to your PC and check for an update.  Wait a couple of seconds when the “checking for update” message appears and then disconnect from the Internet.

Zune will then find the update, reconnect to the Internet and proceed to follow the instructions for the update.

On my HD7, two updates are deployed (I assume a ROM update for he device and the Mango update itself).  Both went smoothly, though not quickly.  Total time was about a hour to get everything done.

First Boot

The first thing you notice with Mango is the color scheme is changed to red by default, I don’t know if this happens only if you still have the default blue selected before the update, but it’s a little annoying.  I quickly changed back to the blue, red just seems to angry .

Adding Accounts

The first thing I wanted to do was add Twitter and LinkedIn accounts to my phone, however when I went to the account setting page, I noticed Facebook had an error message on it, the details said it was error 0.   Searching the net seemed to suggest deleting the account from the phone and re-adding it would likely resolve the issue.

I deleted the account but then the error changed to 0x83cf1202, and indicated the account could not be deleted.  This error turned out to be much easier to find information on, MS KB2475837, gives details on how to resolve both errors.  In this case, signing in to live.com and deleting the Facebook link from there and then re-syncing both Live and Facebook on the phone allowed me to delete the account.

Once the account was re-added everything functioned as expected.

Adding Twitter and LinkedIn was easy but of course going through the people hub and linking everything together took a few minutes.

Complex Password

The next feature I wanted to use was the complex lock screen passwords.  However there is no setting to enable this on the phone, you must enable it through an Exchange server policy.  This is highly disappointing, MS has denied the majority of its users this enhanced security.

However having Exchange I enabled the appropriate policy with some unintended consequences.  Mango picked up the change on the next sync and forced me to update my password, however the same thing happened on my TouchPad as well.  In Exchange there are options on how complex the password must be and I have selected the lowest possible values (4 characters long, no requirement for multiple case/numbers/etc.), this was fine on Mango, however the TouchPad seems to see the complex requirements and force you to have upper/lower case and numbers in the password no matter what the Exchange values are.

Miscellaneous Items

One interesting point I found was the search provider setting which was defaulted to Yahoo on my Bell phone instead of Bing (the only other choice).

Another change is in the lock screen, in NoDo when you woke up the phone, the lock screen with the clock and other text appeared all at the same time.  In Mango the background appears first and then after a slight delay the text is drawn on the screen.  Not a big deal, just kind of weird.

One nice item I found in the “Battery Saver” settings area is a percentage of battery left as well as an estimated run time.  Too bad they’re buried so deep instead of being available at the top level.

Another overdue item is in the camera, the menu now orients itself properly if you want to take a portrait photo in stead of landscape.

Apps

HTC has updated their bundled apps to better work with Mango and I have to admit that I had deleted them all from my phone, however two caught my eye and so I downloaded them again:

HTC Hub

The original hub was, quite frankly, useless.  The new HTC Hub is actually quite nice, the best feature is the pinable weather tiles.  For the time being it’s replaced the Weather Network app on my start page.

HTC Connected Media

This is a DLNA compliant media server and client, I have to admit I haven’t had much time to play with this, but it seems to work.

IE9

IE 9 on Mango is a big change, but the one that I think is going to annoy me the most is the removal of the tabs button from the lower menu.  I know they had to do this to get the address bar there and I image most people will not have an issue, but here’s the scenario that I use it a lot in:

• read an E-mail
• select a link from the message that open’s IE
• browse around a bit
• hit the back button to go back to the message… Opps that just goes back one web page.
• instead open the tabs, close the current tab and go to a blank tab
• now hit the back button to get back to the e-mail

The good news is that using the task switcher gets you back to the message now so this is probably livable.

E-Mail

The big news on the e-mail client side is the threaded conversation view and I have to admit I like in in Outlook on the desktop so this is pretty much a no brainer in WP7.

However, just like in IE9, MS has decided to move the folder button in e-mail off of the bottom menu and you now must pull up the full menu to change folders.  This will be an inconvenience as I receive mail in to several folders, not just my Inbox.

Invalid SIM

Other than the Facebook issue, the only other problem I’ve had since upgrading to Mango is a single instance of the phone giving me an “Invalid SIM card” error.  A simple reset of the device cleared the issue and I’m not sure if this is a Mango or Bell issue.  I’ll keep an eye on it and for the time being assume it was just a Bell network issue.

So what’s still missing?

As good as Mango is there are still things missing:

• SMS Sync with Exchange (this could include the IM as well?)
• Flash/Silverlight support
• VOIP integration (SIP and Skype at least)
• VPN support (can anyone say OpenVPN?)
• Pinable configuration items (like Wi-Fi) (there is a third party app for this now)
• Real customizable color themes
• Artist information (a-la Zune)
• Notification profiles so I don’t have to listen to every e-mail that comes in at 4am
• Exchange Notes folder sync

The good news is that Microsoft has started a site to list what people want to see next in Windows Phone and be able to vote on the suggestions so they can prioritize them, I think I’ll be using that quite a bit .

The Good:

• Far too much to list here, but…
• Integrated Twitter and LinkedIn
• Complex passwords
• IE9
• Threaded conversations

The not so bad/not so good:

• Had to force the update instead of continuing to wait and wait and wait for it
• Finding Mangofied apps in the Marketplace is hard as there is no way to tell which ones are and aren’t upgraded
• IE tabs button no longer displayed in menu bar

The Bad:

• Facebook upgrade didn’t go smoothly
• Complex passwords require Exchange policy
• Still missing quite a few features, some of which were available in Windows Mobile
• Folder button no longer displayed in menu bar in E-Mail

[sc:mobile-category ]Finally, Microsoft had said something about the release of Mango… “in the next week or two”.

Ok, that’s nice, but what does it actually mean?

• Will Mango be send to the carriers?
• Will testing be complete by the carriers?
• Will carriers start deploying it to handsets?

This continued ineffectual communication from Microsoft is really starting to suck.

Back in May at the Mango preview MS claimed we would not have to wait for it, but at every turn we seem to be waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

When Apple holds a press conference and announces the next version of iOS, they give an exact date when the end user will have the code available to them.  Is it really asking MS too much to do the same?

If your within two weeks of deployment, shouldn’t you be able to give an exact date?  Even if you have to give out the last possible day, it’s better than continuing to give out fuzzy statements like “in the next week or two”.

Come on MS, get it together and give me Manog .

[sc:mobile-category ]Last week we finally saw the first new Windows Phone hardware since the launch of WP7 almost a year ago (ok, technically the Japan only phone that was launched a few weeks ago was the first, but I don’t live in Japan, so it doesn’t  really count ).

HTC announced the Radar and Titan, both running Mango (looks like they’re calling it Windows Phone 7.5).  The Radar is a pretty ordinary phone, so I won’t talk about it, but the Titan?  That’s a whole different story.

As the name infers, the Titan is one majorly large phone, with a 4.7″ screen, it has one of the largest displays ever packed in to a commercial handset (Dell had a 5″ tablet they called a phone, but no one bought it).

I wanted to know exactly how big the Titan is, so I thought I’d compare it to something I already have, my HD7.  Oh and some other phone I hear is kind of popular:

	HD7	Titan	iPhone 4
Height (mm)	122	131.5	111.2
Width (mm)	68	70.7	58.6
Depth (mm)	11.2	9.9	9.3
Weight (g)	162	160	137
Display Size (I)	4.3	4.7	3.5

So a little bit taller than the HD7 (9mm), just a hair wider (2.7mm) and thinner by 1.3mm.  That’s quite impressive and it’s actually lighter as well.

In fact when you do the math, the titan takes up less volume then the HD7 (92cm² vs 92.9cm²).

In comparison to that “other” phone, the Titan is larger (20.3×12.1×0.6) and takes up about 1/3 more volume, but you get over 50% more screen real estate.  Not a bad trade off I think.

One item that many in the press have noticed is that the Titan still has the 800×480 resolution that all the other WP7 phones have.  While I don’t think this is a huge problem (we’re looking at a phone, not hanging it on the wall as art) it does concern me that MS hasn’t yet moved beyond this single resolution or form factor.

One of the grips I had in my HD7 review was the back plate of the phone was not as good as the rest of the phone.  The Titan takes care of this by have a aluminum uni-body construction for the back of the phone, which seems like a really nice improvement.

The other big piece of news on the Titan is the front facing camera.  Skype and other video conferencing services will use this, but I have to admit I think it’s mostly used by vain people.  Really, who wants to see everyone else’s ugly mug on their phone while they talk to them.  The last decade of cell phones have show us that text messaging is immensely popular and you don’t even have to talk to the person let alone see them .

Will the Titan be my next phone?  Probably not.  I’m looking for two things that it doesn’t have:

1. Wireless charging
2. Removable storage with SDXC support (SD cards with more than 32g of space)

Since I’ve had the TouchPad, wireless charging has become a significant addition to my feature list on any portable device I buy.  It’s just so convenient to just drop the device on the dock and walk away.

SDXC support should be standard in everything by now, their no excuse for limiting the storage to 32g.

But if I had to buy a new phone for some reason, the Titan would certainly be the front runner.