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With Windows Phone 7 still lagging a ways behind its iOS and Android counterparts, Microsoft has turned to an aggressive schedule of upgrades to try and catch up. The company previewed its next major update to its mobile platform, Mango, at the MIX11 Web and Phone developer conference.
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Among the most-anticipated functionality being introduced with Mango is multitasking (a feature Apple finally introduced last year), along with something called Live Agents. Live Agents allows Windows Phone 7 to run small background tasks which can pull notifications and trigger functionality in response to events like a Wifi connection coming online or the phone itself being plugged in.
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Mango also attempts to vastly expand the API features available to developers, giving them access to true socket support, sensors such as the accelerometer, compass and location sensors, as well as full network access. Such access could enable applications as varied as augmented reality apps as well as barcode scanning.