LG Miracle breaks cover

All is quiet on the LG front as far as Mango phones are concerned.  There were blurry prototype photos of a LG mango phone in the past few months where you cannot really tell whether or not it was for real.

The LG Optimus 7 was one of the best gen 1 WP7 there was and yesterday I was checking out my friend's LG Optimus Quantum, I was surprised how many more LG OEM apps they have than the HTC OEM apps and the Samsung OEM apps.  From first glance it seems like LG themselves have more OEM apps than HTC and Samsung OEM apps combined.  Disheartening for myself as I have an HTC but at the same time good for you LG WP7 users.

Just when we thought LG has given up on the WP7 platform, there seems to be a little miracle for you LG WP7 fans.  There is something called the LG Miracle on the horizon and Engadget (or gsmarena i guess because of the watermarks) has uncovered the first clearer pictures of this device.

The screen size is looks to be around 4.0" to 4.3"unless that finger belong to a massive person... front facing camera.. but not much else is known about this phone.  The lack of a flash is kind of weird however.

With Telus getting the Lumia 800 and Rogers rumoured to get the Lumia 900 (they already have the Lumia 710), will Bell finally get in on some WP7 Mango action?  

Source: engadget

How to enable Local Scout in Canada

Ok, so you have updated to WP7.5 'Mango' (According to i'm a wp7 app, 51% of you who are using their app in Canada are using Mango).  There are bunch of cool features that you like and you keep reading about this 'Local Scout' WP7 feature on American websites but for some odd reason, you still cannot find how you can access this magic.

As with a problem with the Bing Map Search I have outline on this blog before, once again Canadian found themselves (probably some non-US countries as well) short changed on this feature.  But there is a way to enable it.

1. Click Settings
2. Click region+language
3. At the bottom, you should see "Browser & search language", if it reads "English (Canada)", well, change that to, you guess it, "English (United States)"
4. The unfortunate side effect is that the distances will be in miles (the locale and region formats are ignored)
5. Press the Hardware Search button and magically you will see this little icon appear to the 3 normal buttons you are used to getting.

6. Another place that you will see this magical little icon is when you start your Bing Map App (also added to the left of your regular 3 icons)

One of the cooler way to use Local Scout is you can pan to an certain map area (For example: say you live in Surrey, BC but you want see what's restaurants are in downtown Vancouver, pan to the downtown area) press the Local Scout button and the the restaurants and activity information will show up for that area.

Hope this helps!

Tango VOIP App now available!

Tango is now available for your WP7 devices, chances are it is Mango only so if you haven't updated your phone, what are you waiting for?

Anyhow, for those of you who are wondering what Tango is, it is a cross platform voip app that works on iOS, Android, and now, WP7.  You can chat with your friends over 3G/4G/Wifi for free!

It works best if you have a front facing camera but it works none the less.   I have tried it with my friend on an iPhone 4 and aside from the video being a little laggy on 3G (understandable), it worked quite well.

Download it here!

Tango Features:

• Free calls between Windows Phone, Android and iOS phones and tablets, and PCs
• Save money with free international calls to other Tango members
• Start a phone call with Tango and switch to a video call when you have something to show by tapping the camera icon
• We automatically find the friends that already have Tango
• No log in and password - create an account in less than five seconds
• Invite your friends by Text and Email
• Simple and easy to use

*UPDATE* - apparently there are Samsung and HTC versions of the Tango app, not sure what the differences are.  I have the original Tango app from Tango and seems to work for me so if you have a gen 1 device like I have and the HTC/Samsung version doesn't work for you, just use the regular version

How the Biggest WP7 Phone was built in NYC

Microsoft is currently holding a big Mango Phone launch event in New York City. There's also a 6 story Windows Phone on display.  Check out this cool time-lapsed video on how it was built.  If you happen to be in the area (Herald Square), be sure to check it out!



Source: Windows Team Blog

Mango is here!

The Windows where is my update page have be updated with the where about of Windows 7.5 (or Mango) for carriers across the globe.

I have also put the information for the Canadian carriers down below.  Telus is claiming on their website that they are rolling out the update for LG Optimus 7

Just tried connecting in my HTC Surround to my Zune Desktop... nothing... still nothing...

Post a comment if your device manage to get you a update notification or you have installed/updated your phone and just want to rub it in.  Try to be patient if you haven't got your notification yet.  From the Nodo update experience, most of you should know how to this is going to work.

For those who don't, Microsoft staggers their update over several weeks to different carriers, different devices, if you came from the Android camp, you will get the update within the next few weeks (rather than a year later), if you came from the iPhone camp, well, at least you will know that it is unlikely to brick your phone.

Good luck!

I'll be posting information on new mango handsets as they become available in Canada.  I would like to get the HTC Radar on Wind so I can tell Fido to shove it :)

via MobileSyrup

Whatsapp is now available (Mango devices only)

If you have come to the Windows Phone 7 camp from the iPhone realms (like myself), there isn't that a whole lot of apps that I tell myself that I wished WP7 had that.

I could never play games on these iDevices or touch screen devices properly (although I love the ilomilo puzzle game on WP7).  I am a big gamer (own ps3, own an xbox360, sold the Wii for a Kinect sensor), so I do enjoy hardcore games as well as casual games. The lack of buttons on the touch screen devices is one of the problems so I don't miss any of the games.  Apps that suits my needs?  I'd rather one that I could use well rather than 300,000 fart apps.

But one app that I wished WP7 had all this time is of course the cross platform communicator app, Whatsapp.  It should allow you to finally get back in touch with your iPhone/Android buddies that you have abandoned for the greater good :)

Luckily, that wait is almost over, I know it is now available on the Zune store (link - opens zune).  For most of you who are waiting for Mango to drop, you have wait a little bit longer.

Another good news is that it is currently FREE.  If you have Mango already, what are you waiting for, go get it like yesterday...

If you want to know what whatsapp does, it sends text messages, let's you attach pictures, etc, through your data connection meaning that if you have one of those 125 outgoing message so-call "deals", and it costs you extra for sending MMS, you can now use whatsapp to do this provided you have free Wifi or if you have a data plan

Sept 27 maybe very fruitful

All fruits are pointing to September 27 as "Mango Day" worldwide.  Would Microsoft learn from the way they rolled NoDo out, I like the cautious way they did it but it just took a long time for people to get them.

Seems like the tweets, mobile carriers websites from around the world are all pointing to Sept 27.  Will have to see..

But folks, looks like the wait is over (or will it?) on Sept 27.

On another note, the popular and often missed cross platform instant message app WhatsApp appears to be in beta testing.  Loved it from my old iPhone days.  Looking forward to it releasing on WP7.

... Fingers Crossed ....

*Update* - I will be bringing a review of Mango update for us Canadians WP7 users once I get the *proper* release in my phone (via a Zune update).  Beta is great and all but I want to know what kind of stuff we Canadians will be able to see in the official Mango release.  I will go over some of the bugs that we have discovered in Nodo (i.e. bing map workaround), another one is the Push Notification problem that could only be resolved if you have a dev unlock device and see whether or not Microsoft manage to be nicer to us Canucks.

Mango has been RTM'ed

According to the fine folks over the the Windows Team Blog, Mango build has been RTM'ed or released to manufacturing.  Which means that the new Gen2 WP7 handsets will be able to start testing on this official WP7 release build and get ready to release to market.

This of course also means that the old G1 WP7 will receive this update soon once our Canadian telcos should be getting this build so that they can start testing on their network and the existing handsets.

Can't wait for Mango?  At least it's now a matter of Rogers/Telus/Bell/Sasktel getting their act together and start testing this build on their network.  

Windows Phone Marketplace Developer Newsletter - April 2011

Just received an email from Microsoft regarding the status of the WP7 marketplace.  I won't bore you with the gory details but here are some interesting bits for us wp7 users.

Prelude to Mango?

Hate to do this right now as some of you loyal wp7 fans still haven't received the official Nodo update notification yet.  Some of you have gotten around the delay.

Over at PocketNow.com, there is this mysterious build 7.0.7753.0 of wp7 OS (Currently, Nodo or the March Update is on 7.0.7390.0).  Perhaps this a test build of Mango?  Perhaps it's something that's being considered for an update between now and Mango (as Mango has widely believe to be version 7.5 of WP7)?  Who knows.

Something that pretty interesting in the additional of a "search" icon to the right of the start screen right underneath the right arrow.

Speculate away....

Hit up this link to read more on Pocketnow.com

Source: PocketNow

WP7 News at MWC 2011

Not going to bored you with the details, if you want detail information on the MWC 2011 regarding WP7, you can either go here or here.  I am just going to summarize what happened at the MS keynote here:
 Go WP7!

1. Preview of updates
2. "NoDo" update coming in March.. yay to copy and pasting and faster game launches
3. CDMA versions coming in March (not sure how this impacts Telus/Bell)
4. *side note* - LG hates WP7 - no handset at MWC 2011 apparently - maybe they'd do better if their WP7 handsets doesn't suck
5. "Mango" preview? Multitasking! Broader integration with SkyDrive - including Office Hub - you can share and view other people's documents on SkyDrive using your WP7 handset, Twitter Integration in People's hub.
6. Ooooooo!  Demo time!
7. Recap of what you and I know already....
8. More Demo recap....
9. Zzzzzzzz....
10. Demo of future stuffs - likely the Mango update
11. Multitasking - switch between apps is instantaneous.  Press and hold the back button to bring up apps running in the background (ala WebOS) - large swipeable cards - not sure how to kill an app running in the background however.  If they really is like WebOS, perfect swiping the card up to terminate?
12. IE9 on WP7 - pisses all over Safari on iPhone 4 as IE9 is hardware accelerated
13. Extra demo?  Kinect and WP7 in perfect harmony.  Girl on couch using WP7 to throw balls at a guys' balls.
14. 8000 apps, 30k registered developers, 1 million SDKs downloaded since launch.  More apps downloaded on day 1 of WP7 than any other day 1 devices (seriously?)
15. Nokia dude!  Microkia is going to be great!
16. Ovi map type capabilities to not only WP7 bing maps, but to all Bing Maps...

As I was following the keynote at 7am PST, you can see that near 7-9 i nearly passed out.  But interesting stuff came back with the Mango tech demo.  MS assured that they were showing early builds of real code.  Go agile development!