Windows Phone 7.5 Mango update starts rolling out

The long-awaited Windows Phone 7.5 Mango update has started rolling out to devices. Microsoft is taking the cautious route by rolling it out to select handsets in the first week, followed by more handsets getting the update if everything goes smooth the first time.

Devices getting the update will see a notification on their phone and after that they will be required to connect the device to their PC or Mac and use the respective clients to update the software on the phone.

For those who are not aware, Windows Phone 7.5 Mango brings the much needed and highly-requested multitasking functionality. Post-update, you will be able to press and hold the back button on your device and scroll through tiles of recently used apps. Applications can now save their state when you switch, so you can for example switch from a game to email and then back to the game and continue from where you left off. Of course, for this to work, the application must support multitasking.

Other additions include Groups in which you can add a bunch of people and see their updates and send messages to everyone in the group simultaneously, Twitter integration, which shows the tweets of the people you follow in the People hub, Local Scout that uses Bing Maps and Search to show you interesting places around you based on your current location, visual voicemail (requires operator support), improved Live Tiles, persistent camera settings that don't go back to default values when you close the camera app, Wi-Fi hotspot functionality and much more