We’re live at Microsoft’s Windows Phone launch event in London, but lo if Microsoft’s not gone and served up all the details already online. Over at Microsoft’s website, a press release detailing the next big update to Windows Phone, Mango, is up. As expected, Twitter and LinkedIn integration feature prominently, and third party multitasking will finally be enabled.
Perhaps more of a surprise is text to speech, for reading out SMS messages and having them automatically transcribed or skipping your music tracks with a shout, an updated browser (A mobile version of Internet Explorer 9), contact group tiles and conversation threads which connect together your chats between friends across services (MSN and SMS for instance).
Group tiles are one of the most interesting new features: you can set up an individual icon which allows you to group message people you choose, as well as see the albums, updates and conversations of each individual included. Conversations threads meanwhile show chats continuing across platforms, moving from IM to Facebook and SMS in chronological order.
The email inbox now shows conversation threads in a similar way to Gmail, while the calendar now shows Facebook events. Nick Hedderman, a Windows Phone product manager, also demonstrated how a concept version of BA’s Windows Phone 7 app could pop up a calendar reminder triggered by an app, not just an event you’ve put in.
On the Office front, Microsoft has now also integrated its SkyDrive service, so your cloud storage will appear as a drive to browse through files on.
Windows Phone Mango will be a free update for all Windows Phone 7 handsets, coming later this year, while a free beta SDK for developers is due within 24 hours. Stay tuned for more updates.
