The latest Windows Phones on the market run a version of the OS codenamed Mango. For months we’ve been hearing that during the first half of 2012 we’re going to see a new version of the OS hit the market called Tango, but we haven’t exactly been sure what said new version would bring to the table. The rumors that we’ve been hearing suggest that it’s a lean and mean version of Windows Phone that’s meant to run on low end devices. Last week Lixin Cheng, the CEO of ZTE’s U.S. Division told the folks at AllThingsD that Tango is Microsoft’s “low-end effort” for Windows Phone. This week we have more detailed information from the guys and gals at The Verge, who have sources that say that Tango will enable phone vendors to build devices that run on just 256 MB of RAM; that’s half of what today’s Windows Phones run on. In terms of features, they also say that Tango will add support for folders, something that’s quite useful if you have a start screen that’s painfully long because you like to see a whole bunch of live tiles at once.
What we’re more interested in however is Apollo. That’s the version of Windows Phone slated to hit the market during the second half of this year. It’s supposed to bring the OS up to parity with today’s Android superphones. We’re talking 1280 x 720 pixel resolution screens, NFC, dual core processors, all that jazz. It isn’t that Windows Phone particularly needs such beefy specs to run smoothly, but from a marketing perspective it doesn’t hurt to have a device out on the market that has the same specs as the competition. As for Apollo’s features, we haven’t got the slightest idea what Microsoft has up their sleeve, though we bet it’s going to pair up with Windows 8 beautifully.