Continuing our series of in-depth looks at Windows Phone 7.5 Mango and all that it will soon be bringing to Nokia Windows Phones, this week we’re looking at just how it compares to Symbian, to whet your appetite and help you enjoy a smoother transition over to Windows Phone. First up is how to use email.

Windows Phone 7.5 Mango in detail: Office, email and productivity tools

The main email set-up process is very similar between Symbian and Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. With each, you can either choose from a list of the most popular email service providers, such as Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo! Mail, or you can configure a new account manually, if you have the settings to hand.

The key difference between Symbian and Windows Phone 7.5 Mango lies in how fluid the set-up process is and the choice of options for viewing your emails once the account has been set up. While Symbian is a great OS for sending and receiving email, Windows Phone seems to have the edge.

Whether you choose to configure your account manually or using one of the preset options, once it is set up both Symbian and Windows Phone take you straight to your Inbox. Rather than just give you a full list of all your emails to find your way through, Windows Phone splits them into three views – All, Unread and Urgent – which you access by swiping left or right. Letting you quickly trim down your emails to just the most important messages, you can stay on top of your new emails far more quickly.

Windows Phone 7.5 Mango also includes great new features, such as its Conversation View, Linked Inboxes and Threads. Making it easier to manage your emails and keep track of whom you’ve been in contact with, these great tools provide a very intuitive way to view email on your Nokia Windows Phone.

Conversation View lets you quickly see all related emails grouped together. Tapping an email opens the conversation in a smoothly animated drop-down list, letting you read back over all that has been said. Tapping it again, folds the list back up to keep your inbox neat and tidy.

Conversation View also makes it easy to perform frequent housekeeping on your email folders. When you delete a conversation, you have the option for all emails stored within to be automatically deleted at the same time, so you don’t have to browse through and delete multiple emails one at a time.

Linked Inboxes is another great feature of Windows Phone 7.5 Mango and lets you only see the emails and folders you need frequent access to on your Nokia Windows Phone’s Start screen. For example, you can send all your Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail messages into a single inbox for easy access.

Your new Linked Inbox is displayed as a tile on the Windows Phone Start screen and can be opened with a tap, to display your most important emails in a single inbox. For example, you could easily have one Linked Inbox for work and one for personal emails, helping you keep on top of all your new email.

That’s not all, though. Windows Phone 7.5 Mango also lets you pin any folder you want to the Start screen. Providing instant access directly to whichever folders you use most often, it makes a great time saver.

As with Symbian, all it takes is a single click to create a new email in Windows Phone. The New Email button sits at the bottom of the page, no matter which folder you’re viewing and with a single tap you can create a new email and start typing away, adding attachments, CC’s, BCC’s and assigning Priorities as you go, before you send it.

And finally, Windows Phone 7.5 Mango offers an easy one-touch search function for quickly finding exactly the emails and conversations you’re looking for. And you can even choose to search only your unread or urgent emails, if you want to narrow things down a bit.

While Symbian is a fantastic operating system for sending and receiving email on your Nokia smartphone, Windows Phone 7.5 Mango makes it that much easier. Cramming in a stunning range of features and packaging it all together in a gorgeous and intuitive interface, we can’t wait to try it out on the new Nokia Windows Phones when they arrive next week.

We’ll be bringing you more Windows Phone 7.5 vs. Symbian comparisons each day, as well as guides to all the new great features that will soon be coming to Nokia Windows Phones courtesy of Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, so stay tuned and let us know if there are any features in particular that you’d like to know more about.

Check out our Outlook Mobile on Windows Phone 7.5 Mango photo gallery: