Microsoft’s Windows Phone lead Joe Belfiore posted a Twitter update early Friday downplaying the possibility of Mango releasing September 1. He cast the claims as “just a rumor” and thus not to take them seriously. He stopped short, however, of denying the claim outright.
The Mango update will be available at some point in September given that the first phone using the new OS, the Toshiba-Fujitsu IS12T, is shipping that same month. Rumors have had every WP7 Mango phone outside of Nokia’s shipping the same month.
The OS was finished in late July and won’t have had much lead time. Phone designers won’t necessarily need much, however, as the common hardware platform means that they only need to do final testing and check with carriers before they deliver the first models. Existing phones don’t have to wait for additional hardware testing and might be the first to get the release.
