Nanapho

On June 6th at Computex Taipei 2012, Microsoft Steven Guggenhimer demoed Xbox Companion app using Samsung Taylor in his keynote.

Samsung Taylor isn’t commercially released device. It was distributed to developers before launch of Windows Phone 7 RTM in 2010.

You can see both Back button and Search button have old style icon like below.

As Joe Belfiore demoed Mango at MIX11, Microsoft tended to use “zero” generation phones before 1st generations. The primary reason is likely that it has unique USB feature to output screen image to VGA.

The another reason is flashing ROM image. Microsoft seems to distribute developing Windows Phone build as a ROM image in house and they are flasing it by themself. Old phones are useful to flash ROM images because of well matured tools.

Anyway I cannot understand why Steven used Taylor, because the demonstation just showed ordinally Windows Phone 7.5 feature and apps published on the Marketplace.

A few days ago, Microsoft has released Windows Phone SDK 7.1.1 Update. Now you can explore the latest build 8773 Windows Phone OS on the emulator at your home.

One of the most interesting features of Tango is that supporting ‘budget’ phone. Both 1st and 2nd gen Windows Phones have approx 512MB RAM, but Tango adds to support for 256MB phone.

The following screenshots of Windows Phone Emulator show differences between 512MB phone and 256MB phone.

About screen

On About screen, you can confirm the version number of the ROM, 7.10.8773.98. It also describes limitations of 256MB phone, app selection and features may be limited.

Upload pictures to SkyDrive automatically

One of the interesting relationships between Windows Phone and SkyDrive is uploading pictures to SkyDrive automatically. Unfortunately, 256MB phone doesn’t support it, so there is no switch about the feature in Pictures+Camera settings.

Local Scout

While Local Scout is an important weapon for Microsoft people working for “Smoked by Windows Phone”, 256MB phone doesn’t support it. There is no Local Scout button in Bing search page on 256MB phone.

Local Scout is available only in United States and United Kingdom, so if you aren’t logging in your phone with those countries’ Live ID, it will have no impact on you.

High memory usage apps

Microsoft has announced that 95% of apps on the Marketplace work fine on 256MB phone, but the rest 5% may have problem because of high memory usage.

When you open the page of those 5% apps on Marketplace Hub with 256MB phone, you should see a description about the limitaton.

When you touch ‘Tap here for more info’ area at right-above screen, it shows more detail.

Video podcasts

256MB phone has limitation about podcast related features. I didn’t know the detail, but when I opened the video podcast “Windows Weekly” on 256MB emulator, I received an error message. In contrast, it works fine on 512MB phone.

Other features

In addition, Tango has more interesting features. You will be able to choose asian languages, Malay and Indonesian as display language.

MMS is also updated. It allows you to attach multiple pictures in a MMS message.

photo credit: sergekuznetsov, joyosity