WP7 Mango to include turn-by-turn, Bing Audio, and Bing Vision

Regular readers know I am a big fan of Windows Phone 7 and my Dell Venue Pro so even while there are other fantastic devices available from T-Mobile my SIM stays in my DVP or my Nokia N8. We are expecting that the outstanding Ovi Maps application and service will be on Windows Phone 7, but there is also other news posted on WPCentral showing that the Mango update will include turn-by-turn Bing Maps, voice to text, and Bing Audio/Vision integration.

Voice guided driving directions is one area where Windows Phone 7 lags behind Android, although you can use TeleNav now for this. SMS dictation through TellMe is nice to see, especially since I get so many texts from my teen daughters. Bing Audio looks to be a Shazam/SoundHound type of service with Zune Marketplace integration. Bing Vision appears to be an image scanner program that rolls barcodes, Microsoft Tags, QR codes, etc. into one single application, which is a great thing!

I am looking forward to Mango with hopes that it brings more advance hardware as well. I am not that confident about a 2011 release, but we'll see if Microsoft can surprise me.