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Topic: Telcos

Microsoft releases to manufacturing its Mango Windows Phone operating system

Summary: On July 26, Microsoft made it official: The "Mango" operating system update for Windows Phones has RTM'd (released to manufacturing).

Mary Jo Foley

By for All About Microsoft |

On July 26, Microsoft made it official: The "Mango" operating system update for Windows Phones has RTM'd (released to manufacturing).

From a note on the Windows Phone blog:

"This marks the point in the development process where we hand code to our handset and mobile operator partners to optimize Mango for their specific phone and network configurations. Here on the Windows Phone team, we now turn to preparing for the update process."

I'm prepared to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt and am counting on Windows Phone team members to have put the squeeze on their mobile operator partners. Hopefully, Microsoft has "convinced" them to sign off on the testing process quicker than they did with "NoDo," the first Windows Phone operating system update that took months to get into users' hands.

Mango, aka Windows Phone OS 7.5 7.1, includes a number of new features, including an HTML5 version of Internet Explorer 9 for mobiles; deep Twitter integration; support for private and beta apps; new Bing features; and more. MobileTechWorld has a nice list of the promised Mango features.

Microsoft's official announcement of the RTM of Mango happened just a couple of days after the Win Phone Dev podcasters heard (and broadcast) the news that the OS had gone final.

Update: A Microsoft WP evangelist tweeted that the RTM build of Mango was build 7720. His tweet later disappeared.

Update 2: While the Mango OS will be version 7.1 when it ships, the Mango handsets are going to be known as Windows Phone 7.5 phones. That's Microsoft's official (and final, I believe) word on the matter.

See also:

Topics: Telcos, Microsoft, Mobility, Operating Systems, Software, Windows

About

Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 25 years for a variety of publications and Web sites, and is a frequent guest on radio, TV and podcasts, speaking about all things Microsoft-related. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).

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113 comments
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  • GREAT NEWS! Clearly somethings changed because I dont think they ever

    announced the rtm of nodo. This time we'll have a date to measure carrier lag by. Cant wait for the handset oem's to start the onslought of new mango devices. This marks a major milestone in mobile, the first real hardware accelerated mobile html5 browser. Ok nokia show us what youve got...
    Johnny Vegas
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Microsoft releases to manufacturing its Mango Windows Phone operating system

      @Johnny Vegas
      I think Verizon is more concerned about Android...
      Hasam1991
      Reply Vote

    • Message has been deleted.

      Linux Geek
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Microsoft releases to manufacturing its Mango Windows Phone operating system

        @Linux Geek
        You mean like you do whenever you read something about Google and FOSS? Nope, we don't do that, we take things like this with grain of salt, even though we are a bit excited. OTOH, you do pass in your pants whenever you see something about Google and FOSS. ;-)
        Ram U
        Reply Vote

      • Open source = Death

        @Linux Geek

        Don't go too hard on him Rama. If Linux Geek isn't playing around with some useless POS open source garbage, he's out on the streets stalking his next victim. It's a documented fact that 95% of Linux users are murderers. They owe their file system to a serial killer.
        jackbond
        Reply Vote

    • I agree. I've put the Beta 2 last week in my Focus and left my iPhone 3G at

      home. I'm not going back to iOS. I'll be using iPad 2 till I can install Win 8 on it. Initially last yr when I bought Focus, it wasn't usable and incomparable even with my 3G. Still i feel VVMail is a big -, but I hope in final ver ATT will allow that probably in next few months.
      jinishans
      Reply Vote

    • Windows Lemon

      @Johnny Vegas
      Yes in a few weeks this will be called a Windows Lemon
      Van Der
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Microsoft releases to manufacturing its Mango Windows Phone operating system

        @xyz10_z DERP.
        Lamerz
        Reply Vote

      • RE: Microsoft releases to manufacturing its Mango Windows Phone operating system

        @xyz10_z = iNaive
        mikroland
        Reply Vote

      • RE: Microsoft releases to manufacturing its Mango Windows Phone operating system

        I hope you're wrong, but for now the focus sits on the shelf!
        @xyz10_z
        hawaiiskies22@...
        Reply Vote

    • RE: Microsoft releases to manufacturing its Mango Windows Phone operating system

      @Johnny Vegas - "first real hardware accelerated mobile html5 browser"

      Isn't Safari in iOS 5 (which is basically on the same release trajectory as Mango) also hardware accelerated?
      rbgaynor
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Microsoft releases to manufacturing its Mango Windows Phone operating system

        @rbgaynor
        Yes, but Microsoft demonstrated it first.
        illegaloperation
        Reply Vote

      • RE: Microsoft releases to manufacturing its Mango Windows Phone operating system

        @rbgaynor Yep their copying Microsoft and not doing as good a job.
        mikroland
        Reply Vote

    • RE: Microsoft releases to manufacturing its Mango Windows Phone operating system

      @Johnny Vegas <br>You're right. Wake up iNiave's and AndDroidSucks fan boys, Mango is here in a big way!<br><br>Anyway, I've been using the developer build on my Focus for the last 3 weeks or so and it's really nice. The only thing I wish it would have is a way to close the open programs in the new task switcher..... Also looking for a WIFI hotspot feature and native RDP client. IE9 is really awesome on this build, it blows away all other mobile browsers. BTW, for those of you that were worried that Mango would add a lot of code, therefor, performance loss, that's totally wrong. Mango is even faster than Nodo!!!!
      mikroland
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Microsoft releases to manufacturing its Mango Windows Phone operating system

        @mikroland I would let it go if it were not for your having to insult anybody that doesn't bow to WP7 at the start of your post. I have to ask, what is going to make this year any different than last year? All we heard in the first 9 months of 2010 was wait until WP7 hits the market, it's going to destroy the iPhone and Android phones in sales. A year later and sales are still at a point that nobody is saying what they are. What is going to make 2011 any different? I am not knocking Mango as I have not used it but your blind faith in MS just makes you a fanboy which means we can pretty much take anything you say about it or a competing device with a grain of salt.
        non-biased
        Reply Vote

  • Congratulations to the Windows Phone Team!

    I've been using Mango on my HTC Arrive for a month now, and I gotta say it's what they should have released in the first place. They would have spent this year being competitive about app development and bringing new features if they had. Oh well... what matters is that Mango is definitely a much better platform that can actually compete-- as long as the marketing improves and OEM/carrier support can be improved.
    GoodThings2Life
    Reply Vote

    • How are the apps shaping up?

      @GoodThings2Life I don't keep track of these things - how big is the app ecosystem for Windows Phone now?
      HollywoodDog
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Microsoft releases to manufacturing its Mango Windows Phone operating system

        @HollywoodDog 25,000ish
        clcrockett
        Reply Vote

      • Faster than iphone or android grew. Plus the apps are better than

        their ios/anrdoid counterparts. Really nice actually. The dev tools are an order of magnitude better and almost everyone is getting on board with the ux. I've seen interviews where isv's have commented that once they got their devs on board to build a WP version none of their devs wanted to go back to working on the other platform versions and those dev tools. :-)
        Johnny Vegas
        Reply Vote

      • RE: Microsoft releases to manufacturing its Mango Windows Phone operating system

        @HollywoodDog
        Also, MS doesn't count Trial versions and different languages as separate apps, which makes it harder to compare with other app store figures.
        A.Sinic
        Reply Vote
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