The Mango update of Microsoft Windows Phone 7, due for release this fall, offers more than 500 new features, and over 1,500 new APIs for mobile developers. After looking at the beta release, several enterprise software developers had good things to say about the operating system.
According to developer Ginny Caughey, one of the best new features in the release is the ability to store data locally in a SQL Server Compact Edition database. “I know some Windows Phone developers don’t seem to care about this feature,” she says. “But since my background is in building enterprise apps, I found I was limited in Windows Phone 7.0 to creating [only] apps that didn’t need to quickly access loads of data on the device.”
Developer and author Kevin Hoffman is impressed with the release’s search capabilities. “The Windows Phone 7 search [capability] is still, in my opinion, one of the biggest differentiating factors with iOS,” he says.
A third developer, Andy Wigley, raves, “This is massive! These changes fill in all the missing pieces.” He adds, “This gives developers a really rich platform and opens up so many scenarios that were too hard to do in 7.0.”
