Microsoft releases a Windows Phone Mango SDK 7.1 Beta2

THE LATE TO THE PARTY mobile software house, Microsoft has released the second beta of its software development kit (SDK) for the Windows Phone 7 (WP7) operating system that it is apparently making up, er, designing as it goes along.

The SDK allows developers to create applications and games for the Vole's smartphone operating system, both the current version and its upcoming Mango update. This second beta is available now and brings some new features.

Microsoft said, "The Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Beta 2 makes significant strides forward, and enables you to build many classes of applications that were not previously possible."

New features include multitasking that allows apps to carry on doing something when not active in the foreground, such as play music or transfer files. Developers now have access to the compass and gyroscope sensors for things like games, whereas apparently these parts were missing earlier.

There's also "programmatic access" to the camera enabling apps to scan or use augmented reality. Apps will now recommence quickly without showing the "Resuming..." message, and apps can have more than one tile pinned to the Start menu.

There are numerous other changes but we would be here all day if we went through them all, so you can see all of them in Microsoft's release notes online.

You'll need Windows Vista or Windows 7, except the Starter editions, to run the WP7 SDK, 4GB of free disk space and 3GB of RAM. You won't be able to run it on Windows Server, Windows XP or under virtual machines.

The Windows Phone Developer blog said, "We know that one of the most impactful things we can do for developers is to help them get their hands on the actual product. For Mango, that starts today with an early access program for developers." µ