Down in New Zealand, Microsoft is about to launch into their Tech Ed conference, their annual event for IT professionals that is held around the world. At that event, Microsoft is showing off two brand new Mango (Windows Phone 7.5) devices.
Paul Spain broke the news via the NZ Tech Podcast today, with a post on Windows Phone NZ saying that he got a sneak peak of the devices at the Microsoft stand for the Tech Ed event.
One device is labeled as the Acer M310, which is black and shiny with beveled edges. These design features are common to many Windows Phones, however this specific device has a new feature that hasn"t been seen before on the platform; HDMI output (over USB).
On top of this, the device also offers DLNA support to play media over WiFi to a TV/Xbox or other DLNA supported device. However, it"s not clear whether or not this is an Acer exclusive feature or Windows Phone actually supports this now.
Paul notes that the device is similar to the Acer W4 shown off at Computex. The blog post also points out that the Acer device looks to be final. Not much is known about the other device -- an Asus branded Windows Phone -- other than it appears to be an engineering sample, with non-final code on it.
Microsoft publicly showing off these devices means that it"s likely we"ll see them being announced in the very near future; possibly with the first being announced by HTC at its event coming up on September 1.