Earlier today we provided the first official look at the new release of Windows Phone, code named “Mango” – the video above shows what’s next for Windows Phone.
I really ought to find out the etymology of the code names from the phone guys someday, but for now, here’s a list of all the new things coming in this release. Just kidding….there are a ton of great new features but I’m not going to list them. Here’s a few that I think are highlights:
- Twitter and LinkedIn feeds are integrated in to contact cards – the integration of social continues. We think it should be an ingredient, not just an app.
- Face Detection – that facial reco work we’ve been doing that show up in WL Photo Gallery and Kinect? It now allows you to more quickly tag photos and post them to the Web
- Voice to text and text to voice – using your voice to text or chat…well that’s what you already do right so it’s more natural
- Improved Live Tiles – if the Qantas app is anything to go by, we’re in for a real treat
- IE9 – not much more to say than HTML5 and hardware acceleration. On a phone. Beauty Of The Web? Check.
- Local Scout – other phones have it, other apps do it but hyper local search results built right in is goodness.
- Bing Vision, Music Search and Voice – again, other phones have some of this and I’m especially intrigued to check out Vision. It allows you to initiate a Bing search by photographing barcodes, QR codes and Microsoft Tags (without using a third-party app).
- Camera API access – enables folks like the History Channel to create a AR/GPS app that looks pretty sweet.
- Status based communication – Windows Phone will help determine the best communications method. If a person is online, it’ll offer IM rather than SMS.
It sounds like Engagdet likes the same stuff I do.
There’s much more but these are the things I’m looking forward to playing with and seeing where developers take them. JoeB takes us through the capabilities.
Check out more on the Windows Phone blog and News Center…oh and Techmeme 
