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Windows Rushes Mango OS to Compete with iPhone 5, iOS 5

Windows has managed to complete Mango, its new mobile OS, ahead of schedule in order to compete with the iPhone 5‘s iOS 5 & Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich this Fall.
When it comes to software development, going over budget and over deadline is par for the course. But in the case of Mango, Windows’ new OS build, they did the unthinkable: they actually finished it early. According to Kevin Parrish at TomsGuide, “Peter Wissinger, Microsoft’s director of Mobile Business in the Nordic countries, reportedly released an official update on Friday in regards to the status of Mango, the massive update for Windows Phone 7. According to Wissinger, the update was actually completed earlier than planned, and is now up to the phone manufacturers to distribute accordingly.”
In point of fact, Mango was completed back on July 26th. So, it would seem that this new news about it is less about making an announcement about the project completion, and more about publicly pressuring the manufacturers into sticking it into their new smartphones.
While Windows may be seen as the red-headed stepchild of mobile OS, it is a more widely-deployed operating system than you may realize: HTC, LG, Samsung, Dell, Acer, Fujitsu, Nokia and ZTE Corporation all utilize it in devices one way or another, as well as Samsung’s Windows Phone 7, its flagship smartphone design. And given the excitement over the much anticipated release of both iOS 5 and Ice Cream Sandwich, as well as the palpable decline of RIM in the consumer sector of the smartphone market, Mango might see an opportunity to gain market share and popularity.
That being said, there isn’t currently an upcoming Windows smartphone design that is garnering the same attention and anticipation as the iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S 2, or Nexus Prime; Windows Phone 7 receives considerably less attention in the media sphere. It is precisely for this reason that the Mango development team is putting public pressure for manufacturers of Windows phones to fast track deployment of the new version of its OS.

iOS 5 More Delicious Than Ice Cream Sandwich & Mango? Let’s be dreadfully clear about one thing: I love ice cream sandwiches. I also love sliced mango in the morning. But in spite of these gastronomic distractions of mine, I still tend to think that iOS 5, no matter how derivitive it may be of some of Android’s functionality, will manage to be more palatable than that of the new Android and Windows OS versions. The quinessential feature of a good mobile operating system is reliability, and although Android’s newest update has managed to iron out some bugs (I’m using my wife’s Android to type this post, and their text editing improvements make composing and writing much easier), my guess is that iOS 5, running on the iPhone 5, will be a thing of beauty.
There is something to be said for the fact that Apple produces both its operating system and hardware in-house — in this way, the iPhone 5 is ensured to be finely-tuned to the new OS in ways that Samsung’s GS2 or even the Nexus Prime cannot achieve. Perhaps this is precisely why Google seeks to acquire Motorola — for the chance to craft a smartphone in-house that won’t involve another company’s design. But for this current round of smartphones and operating systems, it’s hard to imagine how the iPhone 5 and iOS 5 will be supplanted in quality or performance by Windows’ Mango or Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich.