With the Windows Phone 7.5 update, otherwise known as Mango, now making the rounds to owners of smartphones that use Microsoft"s mobile operating system, Microsoft is also offering up a newly updated software development kit to Windows Phone 7 app creators. The official Windows Phone Developer blog site announced that the final 7.1 version of the SDK is now available to grab from the Microsoft Download Center.
This new version adds seven new languages to the SDK, bringing the total number of languages supported to nine (English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish and Traditional Chinese). The new version also has the "final finishing touches to the tooling experience, a handful of bug fixes, and additional upgrade logic to provide a better installation process for users coming from earlier tools."
The blog site also highlighted some of the things that Microsoft have added to the SDK based on feedback from its users. One big feature was the ability for app developers to download a pre-release version of the Windows Phone 7.5 update to their own retail smartphones. This was a big help in having app development teams finish their software creations in time to be ready for this week"s public release of the Mango update.
In related news, the standard Windows Phone blog site has a new entry on some of Microsoft"s favorite Windows Phone 7.5 apps. The blog included mentions of the new version of the eBay app, the restaurant reservation app Open Table, the MSN Movie app, and the addictive arcade game Parachute Panic.