Windows Phone Mango hands-on (photos)

We got a look at Windows Phone Mango--now also known as Windows Phone 7.5--before Microsoft's OS update rolls out this fall. Apps gain new life outside of the Marketplace in Mango, also showing up as search result suggestions for relative searches for movies, businesses, and products.

You'll also be able to find relevant apps in a new section in the Music + Video and Photo hubs, so long as the publishers have enabled the feature on their end. It may take time to see the list populate after Mango's launch.

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Windows Phone Marketplace gets some enhancements as well, including new search suggestions as you start to type. Music matches predominate, but you can also reduce your typing when searching for games, apps, and podcasts.

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Voice search moves to the bottom of the Bing app and is joined by icons for three new features.

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From left to right, the new Bing tools are Local Scout, Music ID, and Bing Vision.

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Fire up Local Scout and you'll get a map and options for viewing local happenings and hangouts, complete with Bing map access (the map expands and becomes interactive.)

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Like Shazam and other music "soundprinting" apps, Bing's Music ID app listens to recorded music and matches songs with the Zune database.

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A neat idea with unfortunately inconsistent results, Bing Vision can scan bar codes, QR codes, Microsoft tags, covers of books, CDs, DVDs, magazines, and posters for deeper searching. It will also attempt to translate text.

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Like all scanning apps to date, Bing Vision doesn't always get it right. A scan for the bar code of a Sublime album yielded a result for a different artist.

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Microsoft has added an easy, practical way to switch among open apps. Just press and hold the Back button below the screen (faded in this shot.)

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Internet Explorer 9 gets some back-end changes to speed performance and protect privacy, but what users will immediately notice is the newfound ability to upload Web links to social networking sites, such as Facebook, for instance.

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Creating a group contact list is as easy. Simply select which contacts you want in a group, assign a name, and save.

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Once you've created a group, you can send an e-mail or text message to all the members.

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The new group contact feature also lets you see status updates and photos from just the members of that group and not your entire address book.

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In addition to pinning individual contacts to the Start screen, you can also pin group contacts to the main home screen as well for easy access.

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In Windows Phone 7.5, live tiles provide more real-time information, such as a contact's status update or any notification, such as a new message or a missed call.

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Though we weren't able to try this feature out, Windows Phone 7.5 will bring Twitter and LinkedIn integration to the People hub. Tweets and status updates will show up in the What's new pane, just like in Facebook.

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With Mango, you'll now be able to link your e-mail accounts.

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E-mail threads are now grouped together, so you no longer have to scroll through every single message trying to find a response. Each thread is clearly marked and can be easily expanded and collapsed with a tap of the screen.

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One of our favorite things about Windows Phone is the Zune integration, and it only gets better with Mango. A new feature called Smart DJ creates playlists using the content on your phone (or the Marketplace if you're a Zune Pass subscriber) based on what you're currently listening to.

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You can view Smart DJ playlists in the history pane of the Music + Video hub, or you can save them to your phone and share them with friends via e-mail.

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Mango also adds the ability to search, download, and subscribe to podcasts right from your phone. Previously, you had to connect to your PC first and use the Zune software.

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The video player now lets you jump to any point of a clip.

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Currently on Windows Phone 7, you have to download an extra app from the Marketplace to customize your 3D avatar, view your achievements, and connect your friends. However, this will be standard out of the box with the Mango update.

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