Windows Mobile

Microsoft today showed off the next version of its Windows Phone 7 software, code-named Mango, that includes 500 new features, including smoother integration with social-networking programs, built-in voice-to-text and text-to-voice support for hands-free use, and the ability to run one application while another is working in the background.

"We set out to make the smartphone smarter and easier," Andy Lees, president of the Mobile Communications Business at Microsoft, said at the end of a news conference in New York City this morning.

The software giant said Mango will be available this fall.

The challenge for Microsoft will be … Read more

Windows Phone 7 users who were anticipating the arrival of a flock of Angry Birds next week will have to wait a bit longer for their migration.

WinRumors reports that the popular game will arrive on Microsoft's new mobile platform June 29 instead of May 25. That was the latest date Microsoft had offered for the game's arrival, at its MIX conference in April.

It's not clear what the holdup is this time.

Microsoft has been promising Angry Birds, the No. 1 game on Apple's iOS platform, since last fall, when it erroneously said the game would be on WP7, before actually running that by the game makers at Rovio.

The two companies eventually got on the same page and said in February the game would arrive by spring. … Read more

The recent prediction by Pyramid Research that Windows Phone would become the dominant mobile OS in just four years surprised many industry watchers, several of whom argued with the forecast. In a new analyst note, the research firm explains its prognostication.

Pyramid's initial report asserted that by "2015, Windows Phone will establish itself as the leader in the smartphone OS space," thereby beating Android for the top spot. And the firm qualified that statement in its new note to reflect its belief that Microsoft's mobile OS will become the leader much sooner, as early as 2013.… Read more

Seeing Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer take the stage at Research in Motion's Blackberry World conference in Orlando today prompted some wags to wonder if Lucifer was donning a down coat.

A new partnership between once fierce rivals, which calls for Microsoft's Bing Search and Bing Maps to be built into the operating system of future RIM devices, would have seemed unfathomable just a few years ago.

But it's hardly an unusual strategy for Microsoft. For years, the software titan has competed fiercely against companies, only to embrace them when their fortunes sag. The list is long. … Read more

It may be more of a stumble than a full-on trip, but Microsoft is having a bit more technical trouble with its Windows Phone 7 update.

Microsoft's Michael Stroh, who writes for the Windows blog, acknowledged yesterday that the company stopped sending updates to Samsung Omnia 7 phones. Those are the same phones that were rendered useless, or "bricked," when Microsoft started to roll out the so-called NoDo update in February.

"The team discovered a technical issue with the update package for this model," Stroh wrote in a reply to questions posted on the Windows Phone blog. His reply was first reported by the WinRumors site.

Stroh said Microsoft is working to fix the problem. "The work of fixing and testing the package is nearly done, and the team hopes to resume update deliveries soon," Stroh wrote. "When I know more about the timing, I'll pass it along."

The update problems seem limited to the Samsung phones. According to Microsoft's Where's my phone update Web page, the company is delivering the update to most other Windows Phone 7 devices at this point.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--Microsoft offered today its most detailed look yet into the next version of Windows Phone, code-named Mango, at the company's annual show for Web and phone developers.

Oh, and Microsoft said the popular game Angry Birds will be available on the phone May 25.

At the Mix developer event here, Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Windows Phone program management, discussed tools that will let developers create applications that can run in the background while users move onto other programs. And he demonstrated an upcoming release from the digital music service Spotify (which isn't yet … Read more

Back in the good old days, Microsoft's Silverlight merely had to take on the mighty Flash Player.

Now Microsoft's browser plug-in has a very different challenge than Adobe Systems' rival technology: Web standards. And Microsoft, through the release of IE9 and presumably its successors, is helping to bring those standards to the real world.

Nevertheless, Redmond's engineers believe Silverlight has a future as a browser plug-in, and at Microsoft's Mix conference next week, the company will be trying to advance that future.

At Mix11, Microsoft plans to release a beta version of Silverlight 5, and augmenting … Read more

Microsoft is expected to include mobile-payment technology in the next version of the Windows Phone operating system that will allow users to turn their Windows phones into an electronic wallet, according to a Bloomberg report.

The first handsets featuring the technology could appear later this year, according to the report, which cited two unidentified people described as familiar with the plans.

Microsoft representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

With the move, Microsoft would join a growing list of software makers incorporating near-field communication (NFC) to turn consumers' smartphones into mobile wallets. The total … Read more

Windows Phone 7, perceived as the day-late-dollar-short smartphone competing against the iPhone and Android devices, continues to trip over itself.

A month of missteps with phone updates led Joe Belfiore, a Microsoft corporate vice president, to try to explain the problems in an upbeat video on Microsoft's site last week, only to post an apology over the weekend over appearing out of touch.

Last week, Microsoft began rolling out its newest update, which includes the ability to copy and paste text, a feature that it previewed last October. The feature is also one that its rivals, such as the … Read more