The most important feature that determines the fate of any smartphone is its Operating System. The popularity of smartphones depends on their operating system. Both Apple iOS 5 smartphone and Windows Phone 7 Mango have some differences and similarities. Let us take a quick look at few of you.
1. Contacts
Apple iOS has hardly updated its contacts app for past four years. It is almost the same app we have been seeing; on the other hand the contacts app provided by Windows Phone 7 Mango gives you a fully-featured experience. It provides access to your friend’s Facebook wall and also tags their pictures. It also provides list of recent interactions with them.
2. User Interface
Both Windows Phone 7 Mango and Apple’s iOS 5 have static home screen user interfaces. Tiles for Windows Phone 7 are live and can be added if required. However there are some apps that not be customized. You can see few small icons on the home screen of Apple iOS 5. The home screen doesn’t have live tiles nor are the live feeds available; however the latest upgrade has improved the notifications thus making it interesting.
3. Social networking
The latest upgrade of Microsoft Window’s Phone has introduced Twitter to its platform, thus allowing the users to access to all Twitter streams and conversations from one place. Twitter has been integrated with iOS 5, Apple, thus allowing you to tweet links directly from the browser or photo application, Maps or YouTube.
4. Notifications
In its latest attempts Apple has modifies its notification system by adding it to the home screen as well as lock screen. As soon as you get a notification such as text message, e-mail or instant message, a pop up is shown on your screen. Also, you will receive a preview of the message. However, the notifications on Microsoft Windows Phone 7 work via the live tiles interface; as you get a new message a pop up is seen on your live tile.
5. Lock screen
Apple’s iOS 5 has revamped the previous static lock screen and made it more sensitive and interactive. With this change, when you receive a notification, you will get a pop up on the lock screen, later you can swipe across your home screen to view the notification. However, the lock screen on Microsoft Windows Phone 7 shows notifications on the lock screen, however you cannot open them. You can trigger camera from the lock screen, similar to iOS 5 you have to just press and hold camera button.
6. Browser
Buying a new Apple iOS 5 based smartphone will provide you with the improved version of Safari. It has various new features such as tabs, a reader function, etc. You can sync it with iCloud. Windows Phone 7 Mango provides Internet Explorer 9 as its browser and has several exciting features such as Flash. It also provides also tabbed browsing as well as supports HTML 5.
7. Cloud services
iCloud is a new way of synching data introduced by Apple iOS 5. You can sync information such as contacts, photos, calendars, files and e-mails between your smartphone devices and computer or laptop. If Apple has iCloud, then Windows Phone 7 sports SkyDrive. It allows syncing various documents and files. Microsoft offers 25GB of cloud storage, while Apple offers only 5 GB.
8. Over-the-air updates
The latest version of Apple iOS allows you to update your smartphone over the air. You can sync your data via Wi-Fi and iTunes. On the other hand Microsoft allows smaller updates over the air, however if you have to do any larger ones you have to do it through Zune. Apparently, this will prevent people from downloading giant chunks of data from the network.
9. Multimedia
Surprisingly, this is one of the most similar features between Windows Phone 7.5 Mango and Apple iOS 5. Both smartphones have great multimedia features. Rather than Flash, Apple iOS 5 offers HTML 5 and Windows Phone 7 Mango offers JavaScript. If you consider the multimedia features only then Windows Phone 7 Mango has an awesome Zune media player. Apple smartphone seriously lacks it.
10. Multitasking
If you are considering multi-tasking, remember no operating system can match Apple’s iOS. In addition to this the latest Apple iOS 5 has been introduced with mammoth improvements. Unfortunately, with Windows Phone 7 Mango, Microsoft is exploring its opportunities for being a multi-tasking smartphone.
