Mango excites with Wi-Fi tethering

When Windows Phone 7 hit the smartphone market, it failed to take the world by storm. Microsoft fixed a few of it’s shortcomings with its NoDo update, but wasn’t completely successful in perfecting the system. The release of the update itself was not carried out properly.

Mango then, is like a breath of fresh air with its 500 + new and improved features. This time, it looks like the launch of the update has been perfectly planned and executed. Among its many offerings, a few stand out and definitely make life convenient for Mango users.

Windows Phone 7.5 gives multi tasking a new meaning. Its message threads allow users to shift between different messaging streams across SMS and social networks while communicating with someone.

Mango’s voice recognition feature makes it easy to run searches, read and reply to messages etc while on the go. In fact, users driving a car can do all this and more without even touching the phone. Local scout has been developed on the OS to find restaurants, tourist spots and interesting things to do wherever in the world the user is.

The feature that has everyone giving Windows Phone 7.5 a second look is Wi-Fi tethering. According to PC World, Users can now use their smartphones’ 3G/4G mobile data connections to connect up to 5 other guest devices to the internet wirelessly in order to exchange data. This feature makes communicating and sharing files remarkably easy and quick.

Though this feature is greatly desired, using it is not very simple, at least not yet. Wi-Fi tethering has to be supported by service providers and very often, it might be chargeable. Wi-Fi tethering also eats up a lot of battery. What’s more, it also requires a specific type of hardware, the Broadcom 4329 chipset, which is not present in all devices.

Tethering will also need drivers which are not part of the Mango update. Users have to wait for device manufactures to make them available. 

Although it might take a while for all Mango users to gain access to its Wi-Fi tethering feature, Microsoft has come a long way with Windows Phone 7.5. In fact, with Mango it has gained enough ground to be able to compete with iOS and Android on an almost equal footing.