Holiday Gift Guide »

Video: So how much slower is Windows Phone Tango compared to Mango?

Categories: LG, Nokia, Windows Phone
By: , IntoMobile
Thursday, June 7th, 2012 at 5:25 AM
lumia610

Anton Nagy from Pocketnow has produced an incredibly informative 18 minute video where he pits Nokia’s new Lumia 610 against the year and a half old LG Optimus 7. The Lumia 610 is the first device on the market to run Windows Phone Tango, which is a version of Windows Phone that supports devices with “low end” hardware specifications. When the first generation Windows Phones that launched back in Q4 2010, they had a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and 512 MB of RAM. That got bumped up to 1.4 GHz a little over a year later, the RAM was kept the same, and support for 4G LTE was added. Tango meanwhile took things down to 800 MHz for the processor and more crucially it halved the ram to just 256 MB. You’ll notice in the video below that most applications take ages to load on the Lumia, whereas they fly on the LG.

Now before you start sending Anton hate mail because of the MacBook Pro and the iPad that you can clearly see at the start of his video, you should know that he was a former Microsoft Windows Phone MVP, so he’s actually a huge fan of the OS. If you’re a long time IntoMobile reader, then you’ll know that I’m not.

Looking at the prices for Windows Phone devices here in Finland, the Lumia 610 goes for 200 EUR, while the 710, which is a “fully equipped” Windows Phone that runs at 1.4 GHz and has 512 MB of RAM, is only 50 EUR more. It doesn’t make sense then to get the cheaper device, you’d have to be mad. But say you have a hard limit on your budget. Even in that situation, you can buy the same LG Optimus 7 in the video above for 200 EUR brand new!

Still, I can’t recommend Windows Phone in its current incarnation. Later this year we’re going to hear about Windows Phone 8, codenamed Apollo, and that’s supposed to fix many of the issues that plague the OS. We should know more around September.

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

  • http://twitter.com/BigRedMachine2 Gary Brasco

    The phrase “obvious axe to grind” comes to mind everytime I read one of your articles…

    • http://www.intomobile.com/ Stefan Constantinescu

      So stop reading them.

  • Cwcnpa

    This is a terrible comparison as the only way to determin the speed of the OS is to run on identical hardware.  So, one phone runing Tango and the other phone running Mango but each on the same exact hardware.  THAT would be a fair comparison!

    • http://www.intomobile.com/ Stefan Constantinescu

      Re-read the article. The whole point of Tango was to create a version of Windows Phone that runs on lower end hardware. The video was made to show people how this “low end” version of Windows Phone runs compared to the “normal” version of Windows Phone.

      • Cwcnpa

        I still assert that your article should be titled “How Much Slower is Phone A vs. Phone B”. It’s like testing a new blend of gasoline in one car (say a Pinto) and “standard gas” in another car (say a Porsche) and then drawing the conclusion that the new blend of gas is somehow inferior to standard gas because the Pinto did not outperform (or keep up) with the Porsche.

      • Me

        Exactly Cwcnpa this Stefan guy is a clown. I came a cross this site looking for information on Tango what a waste of time can’t say I’ll be back.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/5UTMEWJD3DH3JG4TSRAQLAGUTY Salman S

    That was a pretty impressive demo. This shows how well windows phone performs even on a slower device.