Microsoft has released the update for their mobile phone OS making it the Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango." Consider this the SP2 of Windows Phone 7. The update comes with more than 500 updates and changes from the last update. This has made the device at least capable enough to compete with the iPhone and other Android phones.

Windows Phone 7 entered the market in the midst of negative reviews and missing functionality. There were no copy and paste option, multitasking, search or capability to read HTML 5. This was a phone that is in no way a miniature Windows 7 machine. While the March "NoDo" update did fix everything and make the phone work the way it was supposed to, it still isn't a match for the iPhone and Android.

Microsoft has claimed that the phone is designed around people and not apps. This sounds like a phone centered around social networking and not playing Angry Birds all day. These direction for the OS takes the form of several features:

Group Contacts: You can group people into a name of your choosing. It is handy for messaging a group of people with one message.

Messaging Threads: This enables switching between messaging platforms instantly even in the middle of a conversation.

There is also a nifty trick that Mango added with the GPS. With Local Scout, the Maps app in can identify places nearby to do some activity from eating to shopping. A must-have to Windows phone users who are always on the road.

The phone now has multitasking and speech recognition. With speech recognition, you could issue voice commands and dictate messages without using the phone. A great addition for people who need to use the phone while on the road or people without the use of their hands.

The camera can now be used as a scanner for tags and QR codes with Visual Search. They could also fetch information about books and albums by taking an image with the phone.

While that is a leap forward for the Windows Phone, it may take a bit more to compete with iPhone and Android. Maybe a bit more patent disputes with Android here and there. Just remember that there will always be an app for that.