A few days ago, I picked up a Windows Phone out of curiosity; Microsoft has always been experienced when it came to developer platforms, so I thought it was worth looking into as an option. While WP7′s market is insignificant compared to Android and iOS, it’s clear that Microsoft is serious about this version and have not been holding anything back (spending half a billion dollars doing so).

The other aspect that I was interested in is the fact that Windows Phone 7 development centers around C#, and I’ve been looking for every excuse to try out C#. An improvement to C? Something better than Java? Why not?

So, after signing up to Microsoft’s AppHub, I decided to try my hand at the Mango update. It only took a day to get an invite for the Mango update. And only a few hours to install it onto my phone:

My opinion so far: Awesome

Everything right away is way smoother. There’s a lot of integration with Facebook, Google, and of course Live while there’s still enough options to ensure you can disable one or the other. It’s the kind of integration that’s functional without being annoying.. I’m surprised anyone was able to pull it off better than Android.

Now with that, I still feel there’s quite a bit to go. There’s a couple of annoyances to Windows Phone 7 that just has me holding back. For one.. why do I have to tap the status bar to see my phone’s reception? I mean the number one most important piece of information of a cellphone is your cell reception. Or am I just crazy? There’s a few others.. but I’ll leave it at that.