We"re still a long way away from Mango"s release -- rumored to be in September of this year -- but some new Windows Phone features have been uncovered that should get early adopters excited about the coming overhaul of the platform.
During the official Windows Phone podcast, the team announced new features titled Bing Audio, Bing Vision, turn-by-turn navigation and SMS dictation. WPCentral reports that the features will bring the following to Windows Phone:
- Bing Audio: Think Shazam, but built into Bing and we bet of course Zune Marketplace
- Bing Vision: A full blown image scanner using your camera, it can detect, identify and search using barcodes, Microsoft Tags, QR Codes, CD’s, DVDs, Books, and text using OCR (see here for history)
- Turn-by-turn navigation: “voice guidance during driving directions” (we heard about this awhile ago)
- SMS Dictation: Using Microsoft"s TellMe service, you can now use voice-to-text for SMS messages by tapping a microphone near the bottom
It was already rumored that turn-by-turn is coming to Windows Phone, but it"s nice to see it confirmed for the near future. Bear in mind that these features have only just been announced, and that the Mango developer tools are due to land later this month. There are many more features to be announced over the coming months (we"re expecting some sort of unified messaging inbox), so stay tuned for more as we hear it.