New Windows Phone Mango Beta Build Released For Developers

July 27, 2011 | By Pradeep

It seems Mr Thurrott’s sources were wrong once again. The Microsoft pundit predicted a new release to developers in a month’s time, but as per last time the Windows Phone Dev Podcast team appeared to have the more reliable sources.

Microsoft today announced the release of Windows Phone SDK 7.1 “Beta 2 Refresh”. Here are the top 5 features Microsoft mentioned in their blog today,

Application platform APIs are now locked; you can feel confident to start getting ready for submitting your apps next month.
Emulator now has a nifty screenshot capability built in, allowing you quickly snap quality images of your app without the need of separate tools or cropping time. The images are great for use in app submission process or to share on your blog or with folks such as my team (hint hint).
The profiler has been greatly improved and provides memory profiling.
As of this drop, you can install NuGet into the free version of the WPSDK tools. I find NuGet to be one of my favorite productivity boosters and I’m happy to see the extension supported in the free tools.
The drop includes an initial peek at the Marketplace Test Kit; with the RC release, you’ll be able to use the included version of this toolkit to test your XAP file against the same certification testing tools that we use when ingesting apps for the Marketplace. For this refresh, it’s there but not fully functional; but more on this in a future blog post.

The update consists of a slightly updated Zune desktop client (to version 4.8.2134.0), build 7712 of Windows Phone 7, which is not the RTM version, but according to Cliff Simpkins close enough, and of course an updated toolkit and emulator.

About Pradeep Viswav

Pradeep was a Microsoft Student Partner when he was pursuing his Computer Science & Engineering degree. He now works for a MNC. He is passionate about technology and loves to share his knowledge with people. People used to mention him as “A Geek who is not Nerd”. He was fascinated by the Metro Design language and Windows Phone which made him to follow and develop applications for it. Follow him at twitter.com/pradeepviswav

Tagged developers, mango, windows phone 7

http://www.facebook.com/people/Sebastian-Lang/100001709387409 Sebastian Lang

7712 is available
MarkB

Can it be installed over the top of the previous build?

Anonymous

It seems so, but you have to download the new Zune desktop client.

antonio

I didn’t need to update my Zune client… Unless it updates automatically…

http://www.facebook.com/haasb Blake Haas

SWEEEEEET Installing now
http://www.searingarrow.com AlienSix

Notes:

New Windows Phone boot logo; the square one
Twitter and LinkedIn can now be added as accounts
No new tile colors to be found
Obvious bug and optimization improvements

That’s all I’ve been able to glean at the moment

MarkB

Has it become easier for the Average Joe to add Facebook chat?

http://www.searingarrow.com AlienSix

I havent been able to get that to work at all

http://twitter.com/abhi1manyu Abhimanyu Jamwal

guys can anyone with mango, and you know what i mean by anyone update the phone and will the phone be restored to the pre-mango state aka nodo ?

http://www.facebook.com/people/Sergey-Durnov/100000964100298 Sergey Durnov

I think you can restore to NoDo from any state. I did so from Beta1, so I’m sure it will work for Beta2. Just create a backuo before updating with special tool from xda.

http://twitter.com/abhi1manyu Abhimanyu Jamwal

i dhave the back up saved when i got the beta 1…..is that all i need or another restore point?

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1300735256 Andrew Bares

Yes, all you need is the pre-Mango backup

DominikZ

Now that’s how updates should be rolled out. Just plug in the phone and you’re ready to go. Giving the OEMs to withhold an update is just annoying..

Anonymous

I disagree. OEMs should be able to test the updates first because they make the hardware.

Carriers, on the other hand, shouldn’t.

DominikZ

Oh I’m sorry.. Of course I meant carriers…

Anonymous

If anything launched for wp7 devs of recent is relevant, you would expect your phone to blow up
Guest

“It seems Mr Thurrot’s sources were wrong once again”

Har har. Btw, it’s “Thurrott”. Don’t want him to call you moronic
Anonymous

Fark! I’m about to take the rest of the day off and load this up!
Therealjomon

Hmmmmm. Will this be available to all of those “non devs” who hack installed mango?

Anonymous

Yep!

http://www.flavors.me/fludlyt Fludlyt

I’m a student developer but can’t see how to get this update. Is there a link where I can get this new version of Zune in order to update or is it invite only via email? (n.b. I have the mango beta 2 dev tools installed & will be updating from 7392). Any help would be appreciated .

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1300735256 Andrew Bares

http://connect.microsoft.com/site1185

There ya go

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1300735256 Andrew Bares

Oh and btw, you have to uninstall Zune and uninstall the Windows Phone SDK Beta before installing the new stuff

http://www.flavors.me/fludlyt Fludlyt

Thanks for the link, it’s returning a “Page Not Found – The content that you requested cannot be found or you do not have permission to view it”. (Screenshot: http://cl.ly/2t142w3A0B1R0P1z0y09 ).

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1300735256 Andrew Bares

Hmm idk then. You can just connect your phone to Zune and update it from Mango Beta 2, and apparently that works fine.
http://www.flavors.me/fludlyt Fludlyt

Looks like I may have to turn to xda-dev for mango as I’ll be updating from the security patch build that was released after NoDo. Thanks for the help though and I’ll see if I can get that link working.

http://twitter.com/oslicek David Petrla

In fact, Paul Thurrott was right in this case, because he wrote that the Dev Tools RC is going to be released by the end of August, which is BTW already confirmed by Microsoft.

This update is Beta 2, not RC. The Marketplace will accept Mango-specific apps built by RC, not Beta 2. So we are still weeks from the first Mango apps in the Marketplace. Which is somewhat unfortunate I would say.

I still hope for the first Mango devices coming in September, because the ecosystem sorely needs them. Every one week is good and late October or November would be very, very late. Somebody in Microsoft must know it.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Sergey-Durnov/100000964100298 Sergey Durnov

Noticable things:
- still no new languages, wtf
- still no new accent colors
- wifi status icon bug – always blinking even if connected
- not sure, but can be no support for transparent png’s for lockscreen anymore (in Beta 1 it was buggy)
- can’t connect to MSN chat (tried on WiFi)
- not sure, new app switcher animation
- new “me” icon in Bing maps

Actually, I was waiting for much more things. OS feels little less choppy as Beta 1, fixed few UI bugs. But it doesn’t feel as polished as it should be.
IE UI not changed – no dedicated “tabs” button, no auto-arranging of text to fit screen
Also, if text for upcoming events is too long, they not cutting it. Looks so ugly

And, I’m not so sure, but it seemes that battery draining so fast! Very very strange. Maybe I’m just missing something.
joe

ie9 find on page??
TabletWriter

I plugged my phone into my laptop just to charge it, and got the notice that there was an update available. The Zune icon on my computer was glowing, clicked it, and it was ready to update me to 7712! I have not updated or downloaded anything yet…is this a bug in their update service or would it be okay to click “yes” and let it update? Was going to wait until tomorrow, when I have more time, but if it’s this easy…

TabletWriter

Oh, I have the previous Mango release.

rob

The question is if you update wthout the new zune client, does the zune client still work to roll back? From no do to beta 2 when you updated Zune would not work with the phone until it was updated as well. So the phone update worked but then it would not work with Zune until Zune was updated as well.