Even as Windows Phone 7 smartphone owners await the upcoming release of the massive "Mango" update to the mobile phone operating system, current owners of WP7 phones have a new software download that will allow users to link up to their home server. The Windows Home Server blog site has posted up word that Microsoft has now released the Windows Server Solutions Phone Connector. The new service, which was previously sent out as a release candidate earlier this year, works with home servers that have the Windows Home Server 2011 operating software installed. It requires both a download for the server OS as well as an app for the phone which can be found on the online Zune Marketplace.
Once both applications are installed, you can set up your Windows Phone 7 smartphone to access and view any media files like pictures, audio or video that are stored remotely on your home server. You can also use your smartphone to manage things on the Windows Home Server such as setting up times for backing up files, manage the number of users that can access the server and more.
Obviously this new feature will have a fairly limited audience since there are only a few Windows Phone 7 owners at the moment and there are also only a few users who have a Windows Home Server based server set up at their house. Still, it"s nice that Microsoft has decided to give WP7 owners some extra features ahead of the launch of the "Mango" update. The next major version of the phone OS may be released sometime in August or September.
Image via Microsoft