Microsoft today began to deploy Windows Phone 7.5 (also known as Mango) to existing users. Its Windows Phone “Where’s My Update?” pages (US, rest of world) are now that the deployment is now in the ‘Scheduling’ phase for many carriers (including all in Canada and all but Sprint in the US) and countries.
The Scheduling phase precedes the actual delivery phase and normally lasts “10 business days or less,” suggesting that updates will begin to appear on people’s devices in early October. It could also be sooner as TELUS has already tweeted that LG Optimus 7 users are already starting to get the update.
Windows Phone 7.5 comes with a number of new features including:
- Threads. Switch between text, Facebook chat, and Windows Live Messenger within the same conversation.
- Deeper social network integration. Twitter and Linked In feeds are now integrated into contact cards. There’s also built-in Facebook check-ins, and new face detection software that makes it easy to quickly tag photos and post to the web.
- Linked Inbox. See multiple email accounts in one linked inbox. Conversations are organized to make it easy to stay on top of the latest mail.
- Hands-free messaging. Built-in speech-to-text and text-to-speech support enables hands-free texting or chatting.
- Improved Live Tiles. Live Tiles are more dynamic and can hold more information—making it easier to get real-time info from apps without having to open them.
- Multitasking. Apps can now run in the background while preserving battery life and performance. You can also quickly switch between open apps.
- Internet Explorer 9 with support for HTML5 and hardware-accelerated graphics.
- Bing. Bing on Windows Phone offers more ways to search the web with voice and music search and Bing Vision, which uses your phone’s camera to look up product info.
- Cards. Handy summaries of relevant info from Bing (including related apps) for products, movies, events or place you search for.
Anyone seen the update yet?