Windows Phone Mango operating system beta available to developers

Microsoft has made available to developers a beta of its "Mango" build of its Windows Phone operating system, as of June 29.

Word of Microsoft's plans to make Mango available to all Windows phone developers began percolating last week. Microsoft is making Mango available to registered developers for their existing retail devices

Microsoft also is making a new beta of the Windows Phone Developer tools available as of today, as well. Now known as the Windows Phone SDK (software development kit), the tools are in beta 2 (according to the download page) and can be used to develop applications for both the currently shipping "NoDo" Windows Phone operating system build, as well as for the Mango update.

Microsoft is making the Mango beta available via its create.msdn.com hub. Developers with a validated App Hub account are being allowed to flash the beta onto their retail phones. Developers are allowed to flash Mango onto only one phone per developer.Developers need to download the Beta 2 of the SDK before obtaining the operating system update.

Mango  includes many new features, including an HTML5 IE 9 browser, deep Twitter integration, third-party application multitasking, new Bing search functionality and more.

Microsoft has said Mango will be installed on new phones as of this fall. There's no word as to when those who already have  Windows Phone handsets will be getting the Mango update, as carriers need to "test" and approve the operating system build before Microsoft pushes it to handsets.

In other Windows Phone news this week, Angry Birds is finally available on Windows Phone, as are a few other big-name apps, including AmazonFresh, Epicurious, Dictionary.com and Kik messaging.