Almost as intense and persistent as the rumours surrounding the arrival of the next iPhone, are the speculations about when another fruit will be dropping from the tree. Everyone seems to have an idea of when Windows Phone’s next big update, currently known as Mango, will arrive, but so far all the dates that everyone has guessed at have been rather wide of the mark.
Today, Eric Hautala – General Manager for Customer Experience Engineering at Microsoft – has made a post on the Windows Phone blog to address all the speculation and to give some idea of when Mango will finally arrive.
Carefully avoiding any commitment to a specific date, Hautala says that Microsoft expects Mango – or Windows Phone 7.5, as it’s to be officially marketed – “to start rolling out in the next week or two”. Within the next fortnight, the company will refresh its ‘Where’s My Phone Update?’ pages to inform customers on when they should expect the update to land on their carrier and handset.
Hautala also pointed out in his post that Microsoft and OEMs work closely to ensure that the software and firmware updates that they deploy work properly together, so that the phone and any apps installed on it will work properly and take advantage of the many new features that will arrive with Windows Phone 7.5. On that note, he repeats Microsoft’s earlier advice to avoid installing homebrew software and “bootleg updates”.
That Mango goodness is now so close we can almost taste it. As Eric says, “please hang on – we’re almost there”.