Microsoft have started to rollout the 7740 firmware update for the HTC HD7 (Update: and the HTC Mozart ) on the Telstra network. Rather ironically this update is being pushed out a a day after Telstra delisted the phone from being able to be purchased from their web site (see http://madprops.org/blog/windows-phone-7-in-australia/) .

The update will be prompted for installed when you connect the phone to the Zune desktop software.

A tweet from the Microsoft Australia twitter account @msau has just confirmed that Lync client will be out on all major mobile phone platforms within the next 4 weeks.

Source https://twitter.com/#!/MSAU/status/139169075128573952

About two weeks ago Nokia announced the Nokia Lumia 800 (and 710) which are the first two Windows Phones devices they will sell. They have just released a video talking about how to Lumia 800 was designed. Two points I take away from this video are:

1. They make a big point how they chose a material that was “RF Transparent” to give the phone much better receptions. This is a clear dig at Apple and the Antennagate issues with the iPhone 4S.

2. The Nokia Lumia 800 is almost physically identical to the Nokia N9 meaning that a lot of the hardware decisions had already been made and where not specifically for Windows Phone.

That being said the video is well made as it totally worth watching:

Nokia just announced their two new Windows Phones called the Lumina 710 and the Lumina 800. These phones are have pretty standard Windows Phone Mango specs with the notable addition of Nokia Maps which will offer turn by turn voice directions app. This makes these device very appealing as this is a feature that is otherwise missing from the Windows Phone platform.

The sad news for Australian’s is that there no information of these phone coming to Australia, making it very unlikely that we will see these phone sold in OZ this year.

Even the Telstra twitter account has no news about the device.

The people at WPCentral have posted an article Force Mango update early through Zune software and avoid frostbite . This process seems to work as advertised thus enabling the 90% of people still with out Mango to upgrade at their leisure.

Below are the steps from WPCentral to force the update:

AGAIN… AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!

1. Click on Phone > Settings > Update. Allow the software to tell you whether an update is available. If so, skip this guide. If not continue to the next step.
2. Click another button (any of the options above or below the word Update). Then click the Update button again, and this time disconnect your computer from the internet after 1-2 seconds. Do this by pulling out the Ethernet cable, disabling Wi-Fi, etc. If it says your phone is already up to date, you didn’t disconnect quickly enough and need to try this step again. This happend the first time for me.
3. Wait 30 seconds or so and Zune should display a notification that an update is available. This is 7392, the first Mango pre-update.
4. Now reconnect to the internet and continue with the update process through the Zune software.

All things going well the update process should now automatically do the rest…

The Microsoft Where’s my phone update? page for International Markets has now been updated to state that the Windows Phone 7.5 (a.k.a. Mango) update is now being delivered to Telstra customers.

This is despite the fact that the update is still not available for both the HTC HD7 and the HDC Mozart phones. Hopefully as a premium launch carrier of Windows Phone Telstra will be getting the update sooner than most carriers… time will tell.

Update: You can force the update for you phone by following these instructions. WPCentral: Force Mango update early through Zune software and avoid frostbite

At last Windows Phone Mango has been released to the public as last night Australia time Joe Belfiore tweeted:

However in the blog post that he links to Windows Phone 7.5 “Mango” update begins says.

Today we’re starting the roll out of Windows Phone 7.5 to more than 98 percent of existing Windows Phone customers.

but also says…

make the update available to most existing customers within 4 weeks.

So Windows Phone Mango is here… however not everyone will get it for another 4 weeks. Here is hoping that Telstra as a premium launch carrier gets the phone update sooner rather than later.

Microsoft has jumped the gun an published Windows Phone Mango How-To support page clearly stating that Windows Phone Mango update “It’s Here!”…

However as of 8:40pm AEST in Australia the HTC HD7 still does not have the option to update to the latest firmware…

This is still a very clear sign that Microsoft is very close at releasing the Mango update to Windows Phone’s all around the world.

The web based version of the Windows Phone has now gone live at http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/marketplace . This is a web based version of the app store that allows anyone with or without Zune software installed to peruse the app store to see the now 20,000+ apps available to Windows Phone users.

In what will probably be a quick succession of key milestones before Windows Phone mango is pushed out to users Microsoft have updated the International Release Schedule.

As you can see below both Telstra and Optus updates are now said to be “Scheduling” which means we will probably see the update happening REALLY SOON (I hope).