Rumour: Tango may bring updated media controls and live tile folders

January 19, 2012 | By Surur

WPH's homebrew folders

MyMicrosoftLife reports on some info from a reliable tipster, who claimed that Tango will being two interesting changes to Windows Phone 7.

The first is that the drop down media controls will return to a smaller size, after getting bigger in Mango. I personally think that would be a negative change, and make it more difficult to control your music playback in the car for example.

The second, more interesting, titbit, is that Microsoft will allow users to create folders on their Start screen.

MML writes:

This will allow users to group applications together for a tidier start screen and I would guess quicker access to apps. Again I have no images to show how this feature looks, nor do I have information on quite how this works. I would imagine, though, that the “folder” tile would show notifications from all the tiles held within.

Now this is not the first time we have heard this rumour, and we have even seen mock-ups (which we were asked to remove) which essentially involved the start screen expanding with new tiles, rather than navigating to a subscreen.

Of course this raises the issue of how the live tiles will be able to deliver information when hidden inside a folder, but this mystery will have to wait for another day.

Do our readers think this leak is credible? Let us know below.

About Surur

Site Admin and Windows Phone enthusiast, he has been using Windows Mobile devices since before they were called PocketPC’s. He is currently sporting a HTC 7 Trophy.

Tagged folders, rumour, tango, windows phone 7.75

Anonymous

Not liking either of those changes.
Anonymous

Smaller Media Control would suck. Kinda like the new big one, even though i wasn’t convinced at first. But its really comfortible how it looks and works right now. Of course… that doesn’t necessary mean there can’t be any advancements. We’ll see.

The folder-idea on the other hand is nice. Really nice. Imagine it’d look like the group-tiles (with one big picture morphing into another) and not like the contact-tile (like in the image attachted to this blog-post). If there would only be like two apps in there, it could look kind of empty.
Showing live content of those apps, included in the folder, on the back of the tile would – of course – be very nice, but i’m not sure, if thats really realizable. We’ll see too.

Anyways i’m very excited about the things to come and think this will be an amazing year for MS and WP.
Ps:
Even better: Create own Hubs. Like a News-Hub, a Weather-Hub, an Entertainment-Hub, a Movie-Hub whatever you need. Not sure how that would look and work right now… but i like the idea. Maybe i’ll screen that…
Michael Parker

These sound like changes to improve usability on low-resolution and half-height screens. Keep in mind that Tango is targeted at cheaper phones. Just because these features are present in the OS doesn’t mean that we’ll see them in the high-end phones.
Anonymous

As long as they keep the media controls on the locked screen wallpaper I’m fine : ) It got kinda annoying for the user to have to press the lock button then volume button to change a track when using Zune.
Anonymous

I imagine the “folders” will simply raise live tile notifications to the front in the same way the Groups tiles work. I’m not a fan of the idea, and probably won’t use them anyway. But that’s how I could see them working.

I also disagree with another change to the media controls. Mango made them perfect. Though it’d be nice to have a stop button, that’s trivial compared to the more important issues that need to be addressed.
http://www.facebook.com/ellis.w.brown Ellis W. Brown Jr.

I would love to see live titles folders. Going to be interesting to see how they will implement it. Cant wait to see.
Anonymous

In folder, the information will recycle the notifications like photos album. Most recent can flash first and go back to recycle. I think it has its advantages.
http://www.facebook.com/cjeong Chris Jeong

Maybe if you make folders look like the people’s tile, I’ll be ok with that and ppl who don’t get Metro UI seems to scream for it so we have to cater to those ppl (u can choose not to use folders).

But WHY smaller media control? If that gets in the way of ur content, press back button and the controls disappears.

Things I’d really like to see:
1. Dual core so haters can stfu.
2. SKYPE
3. Notification centre. Yes, u don’t need it, but sometimes, I would like a place to look at all the toast notification again if I miss it. I think they can put it in the ME tile as another page of pivot.

Monkey D Black

1)yep with a place to see all the notification.

2) I think they should combine the ME tile with the People tile and give the user the option to deep link to the ME section on the start screen.

3) YES to SKYPE! this is one I can’t wait enough for. I think I’d be less and less on facebook. they should really turn skype into a form of social network as in a full online persona.

4) yes to multi-core chip support. a lot of people say multi-core is not needed….I guess I can agree with them that it’s not NEEDED, but it is WANTED….a lot. my quad core DV7 runs flawlessly compared to the dual core I had before it and they’re running at the same speed.
http://twitter.com/EvilEls Evil Els

>>
WHY smaller media control?

Well, what’s Tango all about?
As you can learn from the WP roadmap, it’s of course: optimizing WP for crappy hardware. And that includes smaller displays with probably smaller resolutions; which most likeley cannot show the large buttons without covering half of the screen.

But this only shows once again, how far away M$ is from “put people first”…

Joe Atkinson

In your humble opinion which you are entitled to and entitled to express. Many however may likewise choose to disagree!

http://twitter.com/EvilEls Evil Els

Word! Almost everyone with more filigree fingers or a 4.x” display would
feel flattered by this rollback. Stubby fingers however would tend to rather
dislike what is rumored about to come

Anonymous

Thanks for the tip about the back button to make the controls disappear! I never knew about that, even though I read a lot about the OS and it’s hidden features.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Mista-Wett/1790576150 Mista Wett

I NEED FOLDERS NOW!!! That’s all I have to say about that..
Anonymous

Here’s what I don’t want to see, a tile that looks like a folder that I loose the ability to receive dynamic update information from. If thats what we loose in exchange for folders to group apps in, I don’t want it. If it gives us updates on all the apps contained within the folder, I don’t want to have to wait for the folder to cycle through the updates. It better have a way to manually cycle through the updates quickly. What makes the current home page brilliant is the ability to receive info at a glance, no waiting. Loose that and you have lost what makes our home page so special.

Monkey D Black

if you don’t want it then don’t use it. they have a saying where I come from….”one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure”. we really have no idea how they will or even if they will implement folders in the next release but i would like if they do. I’m not sure why you think they would put static icons and not have it rotate like the people tile does. i’m sure they would want to implement a distinct notifier on the folder tile if a an inside has an update/notification.

wait, wait, let me get this straight, you’re trying to tell the people who did the research, who created a whole new design language how to implement their UI and design? who are you? have you done any research on Metro? do you know what makes Metro works? I mean, do you think you can do a better job than they can?

really, I think we should just wait and see how they implement then we can critique it, other than that we’ll just be acting as if we know better than they do…if you can do better than they can, then by all means, go right ahead and come up with something way better that blows minds.

Anonymous

@ Monkey D – Depending on how this would be implemented, it will be a feature you either have a choice using or not, unless you know something I don’t? And as you can see from THIS post I did not say anything about static icons. That was the other post I made and I emphasized that my comment was based upon the homebrew photo showing static icons within a tile which I wouldn’t find useful. I doubt anyone else would either. Hopefully that clears up your confusion.

As for the rest of your comment, I’m providing an opinion here (of which I’m entitled) based upon what I hope to see implemented. I have done no research, nor do I know any more or less than any designer for this OS or any other for that matter, nor is that required to have an opinion. Just like you I will wait to see what they implement, if anything. At that time you will also see another opinion most likely. And Monkey D, thank you for your interest in my opinion.

Anonymous

How could you not have a choise to not use them? I must be missing something.

Anonymous

When I look at the photo from the homebrew folks I see a tile with a bunch of static icons. I don’t want static icons on a tile. In fact I want every tile to be live and flip with more information. I also want to be able to manually flip every tile without having to wait.

Anonymous

I just have to point out that if you’re looking at a photo, everything is going to be static.

In either case, that’s a homebrew solution. We have no idea how an official version may or may not be implemented.

Anonymous

Titbit?
Christoffer Lundberg

I hope this is nothing more than grain from the rumor mill.
markiz

I hope they make IE usable again (favourites and tabs buttons).
Anonymous

ios manages it and its years behind wp7 so ”
how the live tiles will be able to deliver information when hidden inside a folder” isnt really a question…
http://profiles.google.com/frankguillenjr Frank Guillen Jr.

Calm down people! Maybe the music buttons are going to stay as big and spaced the same. I think they might just cut that huge space where the music level numbers and the silent+ring buttons are. I hope they do that and try to fit them some where else. As long as they don’t make the music control buttons smaller and spaced closer we should be ok.
http://profiles.google.com/frankguillenjr Frank Guillen Jr.

Well then you don’t have to make folders if you don’t want to. Noboy is forcing you to make folders.
http://twitter.com/fganser Nando Ganser

Folders are ok for those who want to use it. Smaller media control…hmm don’t know.
What we really need is to see at lockscreen what most want as notification hub, I’d like to see in lockscreen new and how many facebook messages, IM+, Whatsapp or what ever app you use.
Instead of smaller media control it should have quick access to WiFi.
Anonymous

I swear, the bigger transport controls was one of the two or three best things about Mango. I HATED they tiny controls of pre-Mango. This better not happen.
Anonymous

I have had a WP7 device (Titan) for 5 days now – moved from WP6.5 HD2 (God I miss that phone)

A few points -

1) Live tiles are not so important beyond core Apps – email, facebook etc. You really do need the option to have folders as the current layout becomes messy very quickly.
2) Creating Video playlists and continuous play from one video to the next is not supported – this needs to change now
3) The creation of audio playlists is a mess and if you hold down on a song you do not have the option to transfer the song to a playlist that you have created and there is no easy playlist creation path (unlike the iOS devices. and even on my Sony Walkman)
4) You are able to create a combined email folder but there is no indication from which account the emails are coming from

I have had people look at the phone with envious eyes and at least 2 people I know would like to try the platform out now; but I have had to tell them that it is incomplete and to hold off.

MSFT had better get their act together fast.

Love the platform but it has to get better really quickly.