Yesterday, at Mix 11, Microsoft held a keynote speech about windows phone 7 for developers. All the features coming in Mango were not mentioned as the conference was focused on developers rather than end-users but still I felt a LOT of stuff was announced.

There's been a number of things people have wanted to see on the platform and apart from 'personal hotspot' which would be an end-user feature, I felt like most other things people wanted are coming in the mango update.

We might get IE9 in advance of Mango.

Did anyone else watch the keynote or read about it?

They announced major apps like skype and spotify, their new APIs mean we'll be able to get whatsapp. There's a whole bunch of other things.

End of the year is a long way away, but for ordinary folks, 2012 might be a good time to buy a Nokia Windows phone which will have Mango pre-installed.

I agree. Once the changes are delivered, from a software perspective the WP7 OS may just be the best performing all-round of all the mobile OSs (e.g. easily the quickest web browsing, the smartest approach to multitasking, etc.).

The real turning point could come later this year or early next year. Nokia are considering putting out a WP7 flagship handset that from a hardware perspective would be better than any other smartphone on the market. If they can bring that to bear, it could really be the game changer for WP7.

Exciting times ahead.

I just read up on the new required hardware specs, seems there's a lot of complaining from ill informed people about the "last-gen" processor and GPU. MS have already proved that the Adreno 200 is perfectly capable of pushing out mind-blowing graphics with their highly-optimised drivers, so the move to the 205 should provide a nice boost to Xbox Live gaming. Still would have been nice to see a resolution and RAM bump though. Couldn't care less about the lack of front-facing camera.

Is there any reason stopping OEM`s from adding a Front Facing Camera??? I think with the SKYPE APP announced they must allow video calling when MANGO arrives....

I will be due an upgrade next March which will be the ideal time for the NOKIA WP7 I think....

I'm not sure if WP7 has the necessary APIs to run a front-facing camera at the moment, I suppose they might well put them in Mango without making it a requirement to have one. The specs MS puts out can be confusing, as some are requirements while others are minimums (the specified CPUs are required, while 256MB RAM is minimum, for example.)

The front-facing camera can be added by OEMs but it's pointless if MS doesn't support it, it's dead hardware. I think front-facing cameras are way over-rated anyway (mainly by Americans who think Apple invented mobile video calling with FaceTime).

I've had a couple of phones over the years with small front-facing cameras - the quality is terrible and I've never made a video call (well just once to see if it worked).