While there were few surprises in today’s Mango announcement if you’ve been following the news, it was fun to see everything presented at once, officially. It’s a pretty impressive showing, and if Microsoft can keep its promises, all current Windows Phone users should have the free update “this fall”. Of course there should be lots of new phones, including ones from Nokia, new phones from Samsung, HTC, and LG, along with new hardware partners LTE, Acer, and Fujitsu.
In Japan on Monday, Steve Ballmer promised over 500 new features for Mango, and while we can’t go through every one in one post, we will try to bring all the big news together in one post. First off, though, let’s relive a little of the Mango goodness with the official YouTube Mango video:
Microsoft unleashed a bit of a barrage of news items and blog posts once the press conference started, in case you missed them:
First, lots of stuff in the Windows Phone Newsroom, including the press conference video, the press release, the feature story, and a collection of images and a dozen videos.
On the Windows Phone Developer blog, there’s news and a link to download the new Mango tools and SDK (which they promise will be up later today), the Windows Phone blog has an overview, and the Inside Windows Live blog has news about Windows Live Messenger integration in Mango. The Windows Phone UK blog has a post up, too.
Nokia has a post up, confirming that the first Nokia phones will be shipping with Mango installed (the press conference revealed that Microsoft currently has Nokia phones running Mango in its test facilities)
Of course Twitter is all abuzz about Mango, as are the blogs. Engadget noticed, as we did, that Dell was absent from the list of hardware partners, Tom Warren has a nice set of hands on videos at WinRumors, as does This is My Next…, you can work back through Paul Thurrott’s live blog at Windows Phone Secrets, and there’s loads more coverage, too.
So lots to digest in a short period of time, and we’ll of course have more coming soon. In the meantime, what’s your favorite Mango feature? Take our poll (in the sidebar)!