We"ve been saying Microsoft is planning on shipping Windows Phone 7 "Mango" devices as well as the OS by September, and today we"ve received almost official confirmation that this will be the case. Microsoft recently released Mango in beta form to developers to load onto their retail devices for testing, ahead of the official release of the update.
The confirmation of the expected release date came from Microsoft"s Imagine Cup Twitter account, according to Slashgear. The tweet let the cat out of the bag saying that "Imagine Cup finalists ALL receive Windows Phone 7.5 Mango Release!!" Each Student will get the phone by September!"
Neowin"s independent sources are stating that the release is still on track for September, and we should expect to see further news about devices and the full OS release sometime during late August. The company showed off new devices by Samsung, ZTE, Acer and Fujitsu at it"s Worldwide Partner conference earlier this week, and touted that the platform now has over 22,000 applications.
Mango brings 500 new features to the Windows Phone 7 platform, including Multitasking, IE9, OS-wide IM integration, deeper social networking and more. An early build of Mango is available to registered and verified developers now, via create.msdn.com.