Microsoft’s “Developer” Mango update for the Windows Phone 7 OS is set to bring some big changes to the OS with more than the advertised, as the multitasking, IE9, HTML5 and Twitter integration is well known but it’s come to light that Microsoft has also chucked in a whole load of new Bing features to the upgrade.
The information comes from the Windows Phone Dev Podcast and states that the Mango update will bring with it a whole host of Bing branded products including Bing Maps, Bing Audio, Bing Vision and finally Microsoft’s TellMe service.
So what are these new Bing and TellMe products? Here’s a break down for you:
- Bing Maps is a turn-by-turn navigation service similar to Google maps and Google Navigation
- Bing Audio will act like a Shazam for recognising music (and will sell you Zune tracks)
- Bing Vision is a barcode scanner app that’ll read QR codes, barcodes and OCR (optical character recognition) plus potentially provide support for augmented reality apps
- Microsoft TellMe is a messaging feature which will also allow you to dictate text messages and the phone will transcribe your speech into a text
The Mango update is currently in the testing stages for Developers and is expected to hit Windows Phone 7 devices in the Autumn time with the HTC HD7 and Samsung Omnia 7 expected to be the first handsets to get the update.