Windows Phone Mango to come as 7.1, IE9 served Flash-less

The Windows Phone Mango update might be mere hours away from its launch, but as we’re getting ready to cover the Windows Phone Mango event live, final pre-event details threaten to spoil the fun of Microsoft surprising us with all 500 new features one by one. Well, a spoiler it is and what it brings is some inside information about the Windows Phone Mango version number – all visible clues point to 7.1 as Microsoft seems to be downplaying the importance of the heaps of new features, which were previously rumored to bump up the version to 7.5.

Even more interesting however is a look at the new version of Internet Explorer 9 for cell phones running Redmond’s platform. The newly introduced changes include GPU acceleration and improved rendering, but as deep as Microsoft engineers went for the update, the browser would still come with no support for Flash videos or embedded HTML5 clips.

On the positive side, IE9 will better handle forms and caching. Design-wise, IE9 will flaunt an address bar relocated to the bottom and appearing in landscape mode, but largely remain unchanged in terms of design.

If you’ve ever wondered where it’s all going in the future, principal program manager for the mobile IE, Joe Marini has the answer for you in an interview for TechRadar: "If you play with the preview of IE10 on the desktop you can get a sense of where IE10 on Windows Phone is going to go." The event starts in three hours, or 10:00am EST or 7:00am PST, so stay tuned.

source: TechRadar and Engadget