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Microsoft's Eric Hautala told Windows Phone owners that the Mango update was finally near rolling out to existing devices. The 7.5 upgrade should arrive in the "next week or two" on the first wave. As with the NoDo update early in the year, Microsoft will have a status page showing how far into testing each release is and how soon it will arrive.
KDDI confirmed talk an early ship date and moved up the launch of the Toshiba-Fujitsu IS12T to a month earlier. The very first Windows Phone 7 Mango phone should be in Japan on August 25. It's expected to sit at about $253 on contract.
The first Windows Phone 7 Mango device, Toshiba-Fujitsu's IS12T, may arrive earlier even than what Microsoft has suggested. Both a KDDI Au listing and retail shop sightings (pictured) have the IS12T being ready on August 25, as much as a month ahead of schedule. In addition to spotting the phone's details, Nanapho in a follow-up has also shown that it might cost a steep 73,500 yen ($960) off-contract after tax, although it may dip down to $253 on regular terms.
Microsoft's Nordic mobile leader Peter Wissinger revealed that phone makers now had Windows Phone 7's Mango update was now contingent only on others. While the firm had already said it was finished early, Wissinger said that it was now only "up to our manufacturing partners" to actually ship their devices. He wouldn't say when that was.
The Toshiba-Fujitsu Mobile Communications partnership is reported to be over. The news comes just two weeks after joint venture took center stage to make a joint presentation launching the IS12T as the first Windows Phone 7 Mango mobile phone. Toshiba was the company to initiate the move, although its reasons for pulling the pin are not yet known.
Insider sources on Thursday narrowed the launch of all Windows Phone 7 Mango devices, not just Toshiba-Fujitsu's IS12T, to September. Acer, HTC, Huawei, LG, Samsung, and ZTE are all expected by Digitimes contacts to unveil their phones at the same time. Only Nokia's first phone, likely the Sea Ray, would show later, at Nokia World in October.
Japanese carrier Softbank posted strong results (PDF) that it could credit largely to Apple. Its profit jumped from the equivalent of $250 million a year ago to $1.22 billion this year. Much of this came through a shift to smartphones, which on Softbank are led by the iPhone.
Toshiba-Fujitsu held a special event in Tokyo in the evening that gave it the distinction of being the first with a Windows Phone 7 Mango device. The IS12T is a close cousin of the Regza phone but has the unique touch of being waterproof and dust-resistant to IPX5 and IPX8 levels. It also packs one of the most powerful cameras of any phone with a 13.2-megapixel sensor.
