Microsoft adds internet sharing, visual voicemail, web features to Windows Phone 7.5

Today Microsoft announced a few previously unknown features of its new Windows Phone 7.5 smartphone OS update, known to most of the mobile world as "Mango." The announcement of the new features coincides with the starting of the rollout of Mango to production Windows Phone smartphones, such as the HTC Arrive for Sprint.

The three major new features announced today are support for internet connection sharing (hotspot mode), visual voicemail, and a new version of the web-based Microsoft Marketplace.

The new internet connection sharing feature, which is dependent on both support from the phone's hardware as well as its carrier, will allow users to share their phone's internet connection with others over Wi-Fi. Also new, and equally carrier dependent, is Visual Voicemail support.

The new web-based Marketplace features, which are live now, will allow users to shop for applications and have them automatically installed onto their Windows Phone devices at the click of a button - without having to initiate the process from the phone itself. This will make it easier for users to find new applications and get them installed, and mimics the functionality already offered by recent versions of Google's Android operating system.

Microsoft claims that there are now over 30,000 applications available for the Windows Phone platform, and that 90 percent of the "must have" apps available on Apple's iOS and Android are already available on Windows Phone.