Windows Phone 7 is due for a major update in the near future, and Microsoft is to take the wraps off of the consumer side of the update tomorrow at two simultaneous events in London and New York, as well as other events in New Zealand and other countries.
Neowin will be covering the New Zealand and London events live, but in the meantime, here"s a list of what we know, and what is expected to be announced:
Official announcements:
- Sockets support
- Full IE9 integration with hardware graphics support
- Twitter "people hub" integration
- Conversation view for email
- Further Exchange corporate settings support
- Full skydrive support
- Full multitasking support
- Massive SDK improvments
- Full custom ringtone support
Rumors:
- Deep OS-wide chat integration for Facebook/AOL/Windows Live
- "Linked Inbox" support
- Bing "vision" integration (Picture based recognition of objects)
- Bing "sound" integration (Similar to that of Shazam)
- Xbox Live "Game Sync" (Synchronize game saves between devices)
- Xbox Live GUI overhaul
- Group SMS
- Detection when sending SMS of online IM contact
- Album art on lock screen
- Turn-by-turn Bing Maps
- Voice-to-text for SMS
- People tile improvements
- Built in screenshot support
- Wifi Hotspot support
- Office 365 support
- Visual Voicemail
- Battery Saving features
- Native Facebook checkins
- Augmented camera support
- New hardware chassis
- App search (from start menu)
- Marketplace improvments
- SDK to be made available during event
...And we"re hearing about many more features on top of this. The news is exciting for early adopters and the prospects are looking good for the new platform. We"re hoping Microsoft can deliver to the rumored September release deadline, rather than the end of the year.
Don"t forget to visit here and bookmark the page for our live coverage of the Windows Phone OS 7.5 (Mango) unveiling tomorrow.
Did we forget anything? Let us know in the comments!