As if reports from earlier weren’t enough, more information about the Windows Phone 7.5 “Mango” update has leaked from Chinese website Cnblogs.com – information which has since been suspiciously pulled. The site apparently had hands on access to a developer build of Mango, and managed to take some shots of the latest update.
The biggest news to come from the leak is the integration of Windows Live Messenger right into the People Hub, which was also previously rumoured to come. Cnblogs confirmed that you will be able to instant message someone directly from the Windows Phone 7 People app, which could mean a direct feature rival to the popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) instant messenger if it is widely used amongst Windows Phone 7 users. Also, WPCentral revealed via @WindowsPhone8 that "when sending a message the phone will autopick the best method - IM or SMS"
Also revealed in the leak is the possibility of Bing Image Search being included alongside the already leaked Bing Vision and Bing Audio to make searching on your WP7 easier. SkyDrive sync is also rumoured to be improved in the Office hub, adding support for Word, PowerPoint and Excel to fill your 25GB of free storage space. East Asian language support has also been confirmed (again) by the source.
To see how many of these features will end up in the final Windows Phone 7.5 we’ll have to wait for the rumoured launch of September 2011. Until then the feature set looks to be getting more promising with each leak.
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