W00t! (As they say.)  Windows Phone “Mango” has now been Released To Manufacturing, which is techie-talk for saying that the software is now complete.

A quick snippet of what’s new and changed here:

Find out more from the official preview site.

Although the software is code-complete and ready to be handed over to the phone handset manufacturers, remember that those manufacturers and the mobile networks will also need to run their own testing and slap on their own software, which takes a bit of time.  General availability is expected around the Autumn…  Co-incidentally, that was around the time last year that I picked up my Windows Phone 7 handset – and what a fantastic year it’s been with the phone!

As an aside – I wonder if the release will be known as “Windows Phone 7.1”, “Windows Phone 7.5”, “Windows Phone Mango” or some other name…