Windows Phone Mango and Bing Vision hands-on

We’re done listening , it is time to start doing. Microsoft had quite a few Windows Phone Mango devices scattered about after this morning’s intimate event concluded. So we grabbed one, went somewhere quiet, and got just a little more intimate with the operating system itself, testing the hot hubs, groups, and Bing Vision search that are supposed to make cross-shopping a lot easier. Join us, won’t you, to peer what Mango is — and what it is not.

Firstly, Mango seriously is not necessarily Windows Phone 7.1. Microsoft simply needed to get the SDK able to go and, well, they “needed to call it something.” So, 7.1 is that something, a bunch applied to the SDK that we have got a sense will keep on with the OS to boot, but Microsoft continues to be faraway from carving that version into stone.

We also got slightly additional information in regards to the Dell situation, that simply the corporate wasn’t quite able to decide to being at the Mango bandwagon. So, don’t try and read an excessive amount of into the company’s omission from the slide deck here: there is not any reason to think the corporate won’t be there with bells on once the leaves start turning, joining the confirmed partners: Samsung, LG, HTC, Acer, Fujitsu, ZTE, and naturally Nokia.

But, onto more important things. As you will discover inside the videos here the revisions and augmentations in Mango are tightly integrated into the OS, such that in case you do not know where to peer you will likely miss them. The hot Groups feature within the People Hub can provide a fast view into what’s happening together with your friends, pulling in photos and updates and truly augmenting the social aspects of the device.

Actually, you’re able to say that Kin lives on, its social DNA now imbibed by Windows Phone and, honestly, looking pretty great in its new digs.

We also tried out the hot Bing Vision feature, which lets you look for things using the camera. Unlike Google Googles or the such as you can’t take an image of any old thing — only visual codes (bar, QR, etc.) would be recognized at the side of book, movie, and album covers — but things are way more responsive as a result of it. You don’t want to take a pic and wait: the implications just pop up. The OS may even identify and translate text in real-time, something you will discover toward the top of the video above. Naturally, though, all of this depends on an active data connection.

Ultimately Mango is simply not a groundbreaking update, but it surely is actually shaping as much as be a terrific addition to the sector of Windows Phone, adding the seamless integration other smartphone platforms lack, tying loose ends together to create a nicely woven final package. The best problem? It won’t be ripe until fall, and while there’ll surely be a collection of recent devices that ship with this software it is still seen just how long it’ll take this juice of this fruit to trickle out to each of the existing WP7 devices. It also continues to be seen just how much further we will take these mango references, but rest assured we are not finished yet.

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This post is tagged: augmentations, important things, new groups, social aspects, whole lot, Windows phone