Okay Geek Farm
New features coming to Windows Phone 7: Multitasking, IE9, Kinect and loads more
Daniel Carey
It’s been a year since Microsoft took the stage at Mobile World Congress 2010, announcing their split from the megalomaniac known only as Windows Mobile 6.5. This year, taking the stage once again, the company finally announced its first official update plans for Windows Phone 7. Planning to build atop their current ecosystem, the update known on the street only as ‘Mango,’ is due to hit devices this coming March.
Building phones that people love and that are operator friendly is the top priority at Microsoft,” reported Steve Ballmer. He later went onto say that “nine out of ten windows phone users would recommend the phones to others and many feel that Windows Phone 7 is the easiest and most delightful to use.
Wishing to further captivate consumers the Redmond based computational conglomerate plans to incorporate several new features. Joining the update mix are: Internet Explorer 9, Skydrive, Multitasking, Twitter and Kinect.
- Internet Explorer 9: Microsoft’s latest Internet Explorer browser is headed to Windows Phone 7. With it, consumers will be able to browse the web whilst using the same engines that power IE9 on PCs, thus in turn allowing for better implementation, operation and development. Consumers will also likely note that HTML 5 support has been added, along with hardware acceleration. Essentially they’re playing catch-up with their desktop browser.
- Skydrive: For those that aren’t aware, Skydrive is Microsoft’s cloud based storage service. Coming to Windows Phones in the very near future, consumers will have the ability to access their Microsoft Skydrive account via the ‘Office Hub.’ Users of Microsoft’s Windows Live suite are able to sign up for Skydrive free of charge, in turn you’ll be given 25GB of cloud based storage.
- Multitasking: For as long as Windows Phone 7 has existed there has been talk of it using traditional multitasking. As Steve Ballmer touched on in his keynote, Microsoft is hoping to bring said application switching / management in later builds. Ballmer also noted that the company is looking to balance battery preservation with application switching before it’s released.
- Twitter: Although few details were mentioned, Twitter integration appears to be coming in the near future. While there’s already an assortment of Twitter applications to choose from in the marketplace, Microsoft will be incorporating Twitter updates straight into the ‘People Hub.’
- Kinect: With Xbox Live integration heavily advertised on their phones, this really shouldn’t come as a shock. Kinect integration will allow consumers to use their Windows Phone as a companion peripheral. In the video demonstration featured below; it appears as though a handset running WP7 becomes a controller for Kinect games, although I could be wrong.
