Windows Phone "Mango" screenshots show off new features

In the run-up to next week's official unveiling of Windows Phone "Mango," the forthcoming major upgrade to Microsoft's smartphone platform, more features have been disclosed by Microsoft, and even more have apparently been leaked.
The official feature news came from Microsoft's IT professional-oriented TechEd conference. The phone's e-mail client is being upgraded to include support for threaded views of e-mail conversations, server-side e-mail searching, and the ability to pin e-mail folders and RSS feeds to the start screen for instant access. The company is bringing a Lync application to the platform, to enable corporate messaging. The Office Hub is also being expanded to connect to Office 365, in addition to the existing Windows Live SkyDrive and SharePoint support.

Conversation view

Microsoft also announced support to improve the phone's enterprise management capabilities. Administrators will now be able to require the use of strong (alphanumeric) passwords to secure phones, enforce Office DRM ("Information Rights Management"), and access hidden WiFi networks. Still absent—or at least, not yet announced—is support for policy control via ActiveSync, or the full device encryption that many corporations require.
Unofficially, the Windows Phone Dev Podcast showed off a bunch of leaked screenshots and new features for the second week running. The Messaging component of the operating system—currently just used for SMS and MMS—is expanding to include not just Windows Live Messenger support, as described last week, but also support for Facebook Chat. There is also some evidence that AOL Instant Messenger will be supported. Chat isn't the only new Facebook feature to make an appearance: native support for Facebook Places check-ins is rumored too.
Contact management will be made easier with a new groups facility, and it will be possible to use these groups for sending group SMS and e-mails. First pioneered by the iPhone, the podcast claims that Mango will incorporate support for Visual Voicemail. This support is expected to be based on Open Mobile Terminal Platform's visual voicemail specification.

Windows Phone Dev Podcast

Confirmation of the rumored features is likely to come next week; the complete Windows Phone "Mango" will be shown off for the first time on May 24th.