These are a few of my favorite things… by which I mean Windows Phone Mango updates!
If you’re picturing me dancing around a huge bedroom in a long white governess’ nightgown (a la Julie Andrews in A Sound of Music) you’re not far off!! So like everyone else, I have been waiting with bated breath for the Windows Phone update called Mango. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my original Windows Phone 7 experience, but there were some amazing new features coming that I had heard about through various social media channels that I couldn’t wait to try for myself. Well, I was finally given the opportunity to download the Mango (7.5) update to my LG Quantum today, and I’m already in love <3 Now there are certainly some bigger bang features, but I’ve already discovered MANY small ones that made my day. If unlike me you actually like to RTFM (BO-RING) rather than just bang around aimlessly and discover things, you can find a list of new features here. Otherwise, come with me… it’ll only hurt a little:
- The first thing I did was snap a photo of something for a Twitter post, cause I am a Twitter FIEND. Little did I realize I’d already be bumping up against new features that I would love. Aim, focus, fire. What? Did it work? ::takes another one:: HEY, no obnoxious shutter noise! Now I get it, for privacy it makes sense to have one so you can’t be a creeper and take pics in inappropriate places, but it also got annoying when you were taking pictures at weddings, of the cute baby sleeping (who was now awake from the noise!), things like that. So being able to mute it? Priceless!
- After I took the picture I noticed another option, “extras” in the photo context menu while looking at the picture I had taken. The auto-fix does some nice things, and of course you can save or undo. Sweet!
- Now, you might think we were done with the photo features but I got curious and poked around. I discovered you can now save your camera settings (anti-shake, Intelligent Shot, Beauty shot)! Cause yeah, I loved having to tell it to use the auto-shake feature every time I pop up the camera. That wasn’t annoying
Well, now it’s not anymore, cause it’s fixed. W00t! There may be more but I got bored with camera enhancements and decided to spelunk through the phone settings and see what else I could find. - A few seconds later my phone vibrated because a meeting was coming up on my calendar. I hit snooze so fast I almost missed this one! Feature #4, my snooze time is variable, not just the default 5 minutes. And if like me, you often procrastinate on reminders for things like “pay Home Depot bill”, you want to snooze a day, not hit the 5 minute snooze 57 times until you finally give up and dismiss it and then forget to pay it altogether. Not that I’ve ever done that *blushes*.
- New snazzy version of Internet Explorer. I can hardly even remember what it used to look like, but it’s super easy to access menus, the URL textbox, and things seem to just render much more nicely.
- Bing search includes Music (magical music identifier), Vision, Scout and of course Voice. Can’t wait to play with Music and Vision, and I don’t even know what Scout it yet. I also noticed that by default, under the Bing bar, my location is displayed. Have a sneaking suspicion that helps me scout things nearby like food, shopping, etc. Very exciting!
- Lastly, in general everything appears crisper, visually, and all of my apps are definitely snappier! That may be the multi-tasking…
Like I said, there is certainly MUCH more. Check it our for yourself, you won’t regret it 