FIRST, SOME MANGO JUICE: Microsoft has not exactly set the world on fire with its Windows mobile phones. But let's give the team props for keeping an eye on the prize. The just-released Windows 7.5 Mango OS is even more of a social animal than its predecessor, thus a breed apart.
Mango is obsessed with keeping the user updated about friends and colleagues, far beyond just seeing their message-linked faces moving in "Live Tiles" on the home screen - Windows 7's claim to fame.
Twitter and LinkedIn are now part of the Windows 7.5 message bundling, too, along with email, IM and Facebook. Now there's Visual Voice Mail, which lists incoming voice messages, and Conversation View, which groups/responds to e-mails by subject. New speech features send/read text messages aloud. Facebook-posted events magically pop up in your appointment calender. A feature called "History" displays all aspects of your communication with a person - recent calls, e-mails, texts and chats.
Bet that plot twist turns up on TV crime dramas.
For the workaholics, distantly located Microsoft Office documents can be synced and tweaked through Microsoft's Sky Drive.
Zune music and Xbox 360 interact more with Windows 7.5 phones. And for shopaholics, Microsoft's Bing search engine is all mashed in. Snap a product with the Samsung's 5 Megapixel camera and Bing's Vision Search can find info about it, even translating foreign-language box text.
