So we're all aware of Windows Phone 7 launching with five display languages; English (UK and US), French, German, Italian, and Spanish. We also know that Mango is bringing 17 new languages to the table including Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Swedish.
What's interesting to note is the more detail we've received in this article. John McConnell, Principal Program Manager, stated the following about available languages:
"I want to stress that you might not see all these display languages listed as options on your phone. The exact display options depend on your handset manufacturer and mobile operator."
This makes perfect sense to prevent languages being present on a device that may not ever be used by the majority of folk in a particular country or with a carrier, thus saving space. Languages will be installed by OEMs or operators. To allow East Asian language support Microsoft is also adding four new fonts, which will only be available should your device feature the respective language. The fonts are as follows:
- Japanese – Yu Gothic
- Korean – Microsoft NeoGothic
- Simplified Chinese – DengXian
- Traditional Chinese – Microsoft MHei
As well as the above, Mango also includes the Segoe UI Symbol font, which includes emoticons (Emoji), the new Indian rupee currency sign among other symbols.
Read on past the break for keyboard languages, Bing services and the future.
Now, with display languages and fonts out the way, we can move onto type/keyboard language support. Mango will feature support for an extra 20 keyboard languages, which are: Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Swedish, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, and Ukrainian. All except Hungarian, Indonesian, Turkish and Ukrainian will support text prediction.
Keyboard languages will be present regardless to what languages are available to the user in terms of display through the OEM or carrier. Hopefully that will finally address T-Mobile's HD7 and Spanish situation.
While no specifics were mentioned, Xbox Live and Zune Marketplace will be available to a wider audience and more information will be released over the course of summer. Bing services will also be expanding along with languages to cover a larger volume of countries:
- Bing Search: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and the United States.
- Local search: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom, and the United States.
- Maps: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States.
- Voice-to-text and Voice-to-dial: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, and the Unites States.
- Voice search: France, Germany, United Kingdom, and the United States.
What's in stall for the future post-Mango? John McConnell explains the challenges:
"While I hope you’ll agree that Mango is a step forward, I’m all too aware that there’s still much to do. Two areas we’re working hard to address in future releases are languages with complex scripts and extending services to more markets. Let me briefly explain.Complex scripts are used to write languages such as Arabic and Hindi, where the displayed character depends on its neighbor (“contextual shaping”), and languages written right-to-left such as Hebrew and Urdu. Many of the controls used in Windows Phone require enhancement to properly display such scripts."
Microsoft must also continue to pour effort into pushing Xbox Live services, Bing services and Marketplace access to more markets, working beyond legal and organisational obstacles. We're told that more detail as to how they plan to go about this will be released at a later date. Exciting stuff! What do you guys make of a more-detailed-explanation-of-what-we-already-know?
Source: Windows Phone Blog
