Photo Credit: Mohammed Aly By now, many of you have probably seen the news that carriers around the world will start pushing updates very soon and through the next couple of months.  It’s exciting because many that have seen and used the Mango update for Windows Phone in its beta format have seen it to be a very usable, interesting and viable platform that rivals any of the mobile platforms out there today.

Like you, I’m excited as well.  I have been running the beta (build 7712) version of Mango on my own phone since around late July and it’s made me much more productive on the go.

So, with all that said, when can you expect the Mango update to be released by the 3 major carriers supporting Windows Phone in Canada?  The answer is “soon”.  I can’t tell you the exact date because that is something that is managed not only by Microsoft but also by our carrier partners, so saying a date right now on this blog would make a commitment not only of Microsoft but of our carrier partners as well.  I can tell you Canadian users waiting for Mango will get it in the publicized timeframe that Eric Hautala statedin his post (which I linked to above), however.

What can you expect in your Mango update?  Well, here’s a few of the features that I love:

  • Multi-tasking: All apps (original Windows Phone 7 apps or Mango apps) will support multi-tasking.  The awesome thing I’ve noticed is that this addition doesn’t affect the battery in a significant way from what I’ve seen.
  • Threaded Conversations:  Start a conversation on SMS, switch to Facebook and then to Messenger in one single conversation thread.  No need to start a new thread in separate apps; the phone is smart enough to manage the thread regardless of the service!
  • Enhanced Live Tiles: The Push Notification service for Windows Phone is top notch and it became even richer and more meaningful with Mango – Live Tiles continue to push useful app info to your tile, but also you can now use the back of the tile (which flips on the start screen) to provide even more info.
  • Threaded Conversations in Outlook: You know that awesome feature in your desktop client for Outlook 2010 that allows you to manage an email conversation in a thread so you don’t have to search your inbox for historical responses?  Yeah, that’s supported in Mango.  Bazinga!
  • Internet Explorer 9: The browser on Mango has been rev’ed to the newest production browser from Microsoft available on the desktop, namely IE9.  It’s essentially the same rendering engine as well as the GPU acceleration capabilities that IE9 has on the desktop to make graphics super-fast.  Oh yeah, and it supports HTML5.  Boom.
  • Full Sync Support for Office 365, SharePoint and SkyDrive: Ok, so sync support with SkyDrive and SharePoint existed in the initial WP7 release, but now we also support Office 365.  Great for small and medium sized business support.  To the Cloud! 
  • Native integration for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn:  You’re a social butterfly, eh?  Well, in addition to Facebook integration found in the initial release of Windows Phone 7, we have also now added Twitter and LinkedIn in the same manner.  Boom again.

So where can I check in on my update and scheduling by my carrier?  As with previous updates, Microsoft will hold the latest information on the Where’s My Update page on the Windows Phone portal.  Right now (as of the publication time and date of this post), there’s 3 updates listed, all showing “Delivering Update” status.  As an FYI, none of these updates are Mango (7008 was the initial test update from January, 7390 was the NoDo update in March which introduced copy and past among other things and 7392 was a security update  from April that fixed a certificate issue).

So stay tuned and rest assured that the Canadian carriers supporting Windows Phone will be pushing out your update in a timely fashion!