Mango Windows Mobile Update is competitive and actually quite nice…
by Troy Saxton-Getty
We finally got the much anticipated Mango update to our T-Mobile HD-7 (it’s basically the same on all carriers) and right from the first boot, pretty impressive. The first thing you will notice is the improved main Tile interface, it is much richer and way more configurable than the first Windows Mobile 7 release, it is actually very useful.
You can group email, group contact and even Messaging can be a group of text, Facebook chat and/or other instant type communication.
Mango on HD-7
Another great feature is Grouping of Contacts into sub groups, as you can see we have a Tile called Amigo’s, this is simply a small collection of favorite friend contacts (Thank you Aaron Fulkerson of Mindtouch fame for modeling 
)
The Inbox can finally be grouped or even “smart” grouped so that you can pick what you would like to see in a combined Inbox view or not. If you have multiple email accounts, you can select 3 of 6 for example to only show up in the combined Inbox view but still have separate tiles for the others.
Mango's multi-tasking view
Mango finally added multi-tasking so apps could run in the background, if you long press the Back button, you get this simple and elegant task swapping screen, simply swipe right or left to the other running application. It’s that simple.
If you long press the Camera button, even with the screen locked, the camera is available instantly. Great for practical jokes if you get your friend’s camera without them knowing. -grin
Mango took a long time to produce and release, we started to have our doubts, but with 500 new features, it is packed with new and fantastic tools, most are very practical, like cut and paste etc.
Another point of confusion is around the version number, the media and even Microsoft has called it version 7.5 previously, it’s actually version 7.1 – Mango is Microsoft Windows Mobile 7.1
If you want a simple, near fool-proof smart phone interface, the Mango release of Windows Mobile 7 really brings it all home, for a non-techie, it’s really great too. It ran really fast even on our older HD-7 Hardware, plus it’s widely available for most 7.0 models, one of our real gripes about Android updates.
As reluctant as we are to give Microsoft props, The Mango operating system update is Bad-Ass, and that is a technical term…I am saying this even with a pair of Apple iPhone 4S’s in my pocket for my main daily use. Damn, I am carrying 3 phones again…
