14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft already confirmed the upcoming availability of a major update for its Windows Phone mobile operating system, called Mango, bound to add great new features into the mix, but it seems that there still are a series of details on it that were left in the dark, at least this is what some of the latest reports around the web suggest.
In mid-April, the Redmond-based company unveiled details on some of these novelties, such as the new Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Mobile with HTML5 support, multitasking, or Twitter integration.
Also, earlier today, we had the chance to have a look at some other features rumored to arrive on Windows Phone devices along with the said update, many of which were related to Bing, and now we have some more info on what Microsoft might have in store for us.
Along with Bing Vision, Bing Audio, Turn-by-turn Bing Maps navigation, and SMS Dictation, Mango should also bring Bing Image Search, Windows Live Messenger integrated in People hub and more.
In a recent article citing a Chinese developer on Cnblogs.com, liveside.net notes that East Asian Language Keyboard, Handwriting and Dictionary Support, along with Improved SkyDrive sync in Office hub, were also tipped to be on their way to the mobile OS.
The next version of Windows Phone is expected to bring a number of 16 new languages into the mix, including Chinese, Japanese and Korean, but not limited to them.
The good news for users in these areas would be the fact that the new platform release is expected to include a modified implementation of the Metro design language, and not only the usual new character set.
New reports on the matter suggest that the design team has adopted a vertical text layout for these languages, so as to reduce the amount of text clipping, and that the idea would be implemented in hubs (panoramas) and other native applications as well.
Mango would also arrive with enhanced SkyDrive sync in Office hub, with the addition of support for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint sync, and with each type of document being indicated by a different color in the tile.
Bing should suffer the largest number of changes, all to users' benefit, it seems. Along with the already presented new features, it would add Image Search into the mix, a feature already available on Google's mobile service on Android, for example.
Windows Live Messenger should be integrated in People hub in the next Windows Phone iteration, something that was rumored before, but was not confirmed until now.
The said multi-tasking features that Microsoft went official with a month ago will also be included into the mix along making the Windows Phone OS even more desirable than before.
Slowly but surely, Microsoft's mobile operating system is gearing up to become one of the most appealing platforms for smartphones, which should help it gain some more share on the market, and put an end to a long series of dark quarters.
The platform has already managed to slow its fall, and some suggest that it would soon move to an ascendant curve, becoming one of the leading platforms on the market in four or five years. It might even prove to be the top-selling mobile OS in 2015, analysts forecast.
For the time being, Microsoft did not confirm the aforementioned features, and the initial post presenting them was pulled, but, with a new flavor of Windows Phone Developers Tools promised for this month, it might not be too long before additional details on this become available.
