Thumbs up for Mango from The Verge/This Is My Next team

Skipping to the end of Chris Ziegler’s look at Windows Phone Mango for the money quote:

…this platform still has an enormous uphill battle to climb to carve out its stake of the market… at no point while using this year-old hardware did I feel encumbered or out-of-date — in fact, I usually felt like the software was taking better advantage of the available processing power than the much more muscular Android handsets I’ve been testing over the last few months. Put simply, regardless of your preconceptions, Windows Phone finally deserves an honest look the next time you’re ready to buy a phone

Yes there are issues, and the geekerati are going to take great delight in pointing them all out (while ignoring them in the latest iOS device?), but if you look past the Microsoft name, Windows Phone has a lot going for it in style, usability, interface, and design. But I doubt that will be enough to make most people look again, even when Nokia join in.