WP7 Mango roll out now increased to 50% of users

Nearly a week ago, Microsoft began rolling out its Mango update for Windows Phone 7 handsets.

This was a complex simultaneous global roll out across all models of phone and networks, so MS began slowly, with only 10% of WP7 owners receiving Mango (Windows Phone 7.5) last week.

However, should all go smoothly, Microsoft said it was going to open up and accelerate the pace of the roll out, and this appears to be the case according to the latest WP7 blog update.

In fact, the upgrade process has run nicely enough that Microsoft is “opening up the spigot” earlier than anticipated, and Windows Phone 7.5 is now becoming available to half the WP7 customer base.

How does Microsoft decide who will or won’t get Mango this week? It’s completely random. Eric Hautala explains on the blog page: “Put simply, it’s done totally at random, with absolutely no preference for carrier, model, or country. Random sampling is an important engineering technique to accurately measure quality and pinpoint issues early.”

“In some cases, this can have interesting consequences: A family, for example, can have identical Windows Phones, yet only one phone might get an update notification.”

According to the Windows Phone update schedule page, Mango is indeed being delivered across all handsets and networks in the UK, save for one – T-Mobile’s Samsung Omnia 7 is still in the testing stage. It might be a bit more of a wait for those folks, unfortunately.

Still, this upgrade is going far more smoothly than the last major NoDo update, so at least lessons were learned from that fiasco.