Following the recent unofficial information of Windows Phone's next features, it looks like the guys from the Windows Phone Dev Podcast got some further information what Microsoft's next Windows Phone version code named Mango will bring. According to them, the Mango release will add the missing Windows Live Messenger, Facebook Chat and AOL messenger integration as well as group messaging which allows users to create a set of contacts to send messages to. Furthermore it's shown with a screenshot that Microsoft will bring Zune "now playing" artist art to the lockscreen which is expected to show some song information and art of the currently played track.

The mentioned Office Hub improvements seems to finally bring support for SkyDrive and Office 365.

The screenshots also show a sync option for Xbox Live, to most likely sync games and settings.

In the podcast, it's also said that Microsoft's next major Windows Phone version will support Visual Voicemail and an improved battery management, that will include a new battery settings menu as well as Microsoft is adding a kind of Network Connectivity Status Indicator (NCSI), as used for Windows 7, which allows Windows Phone to collect network connectivity information and filter networks to pick the best one for certain tasks.

Non of the new features, neither from last week nor from yesterday are officially announced or confirmed by Microsoft but it's expected that Microsoft will announce them during an upcoming event next week, on May 24th.

Cheers ~ Arne