Voice Guidance missing from some international 7712 Mango builds

By Daniel Rubino
last updated

We have two reports coming in from Italy and France that the voice guidance in Bing has been removed from the 7712 beta, even though it was present in the earlier one.

Voice guidance, for turn-by-turn directions, was one of the key features for Bing in the Mango update. While not as effective nor impressive as carrier-offered services (not to mention data usage), it was quite decent and you know, free.

Word of caution though: 7712 is obviously not 7720 aka the RTM build, so it is unclear at this point if this has been removed due to (a) time or (b) other, more permanent reasons. We'd like to think that this was just an omission from this build and not the final. We've reached out to Microsoft for clarification.

The good news for U.S. residents is it is still present in our release. Any of our international readers from other countries want to report in? Hit the comments...

Update: Gone from Australia too, according to Andrew in comments, meaning this isn't a language issue but rather something else. Appears to be missing from all markets except U.S & UK.

Source: Plfaffo and Professeur Thibault

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.

18 Comments
  • Guys, i have a phone from the open market - how do i get custom languages support for Mango ? I know they are here, and probably carrier/location will decide which will get installed, but still i have only 5 default languages available...
  • Where it does work, do you still have to tap to get every direction?
  • Yes you still have to tap it for the directions which makes it pretty much useless.
  • oh, right. Probably because it wasn't localised.
  • Yep, was talking about this tonight on Twitter with some other folks who live in Australia like I do. It's gone for us too. (http://twitter.com/andrewtechhelp/status/96523882709786624)My research suggests that it's actually gone in every country except for the US, even countries that it was previously available in. I hope this is a mistake!
  • Prob I'm a little OT but does anyone know if the text dictation and reading is available also in other lang then english in the final release?
  • Does this mean it is not available to UK owners/users.please tell me that after all this time MS are still gonna shaft UK users (I was the first person to purchase a HD7 via o2 in the uk, and this is beyond a joke).how about Brandon Watson offering a Mango handset to a UK based reporter/website to see the feedback from somewhere other than the US ?I seriously doubt it
  • It's working here in the UK - says directions when you tap each one, at least.Omnia 7, 7712.
  • Personally, the meaning of "Turn by Turn" Navigation should be like a generic Sat Nav.... Giving you the heads up before you approach your turn on your travels.On both Beta builds when I've tested the "Turn by Turn", I have to tap my screen for the heads-up... Which in the UK is "distracting" in the Coppers' eyes.I sure hope they resolve this and it becomes a true turn by turn!I'm not looking for this to be like a TomTom, but being told one thing and getting another is a bit misleading.Using HTC HD7 on O2 UK
  • Still working in UK :)Although voice pronounces things us style so some instructions sound seriously strange.Also voice recognition is hopeless if your Scottish (not worth using).John
  • working for me in the UKHowever one thing i WILL say is this : my handset is on pay-as-you-go and i usually put about £10-£20 a month in credit on it. I had run out this morning and so put an additional £5 on at just before 9am. Got to work and saw the update so of course i said "update now"first thing i did was add my twitter account and by 11:30am i'd had a text from Orange saying i'd only got £0.70p credit left on my account.Twitter was the only thing i changed after the upgrade.Of course i can't say 100% that it's the twitter integration that's used it all - but it's very coincidental if not.I turned twitter integration off almost instantly and now 7 hours later I still have £0.70p credit remaining....no additional data usage.Anyone else looked into the data usage on the new build?
  • Orange caps their daily mobile data changes at £2 - so you couldn't have spent £4.30 on it.
  • Obviously something i need to take up with Orange then.Just checked my Usage account and it shows : 08:04 - topup £5 08:39 - data usage : £0.22p (56kb)08:53 - data usage : £2.48p (633kb)09:16 - data usage : £0.08p (12kb)09:41 - data usage : £0.67p (166kb)looking at it that's less than 1Mb usage...WTF?i'ts ALSO less than £5 ... but still .... £3.45 in under 2 hours.
  • Just spoke to Orange CS ...interesting callI'm on their Dolphin plan and they said that data is currently charged at ... wait for it ... £4/MbI said that was horrific and had they got a better plan i could change to , they said 'no, but there's an extras bundle you can buy if you want'i asked 'what about iPhone owners etc who sit there all day streaming spotify data....they're not paying £4/Mb" and got told that iPhone owners are on a different data plani'm at a loss for words. Been with orange (and had the same number) for around 10 years. I'm leaving them tomorrow.
  • Thanks for shedding some light for uk users,When I read the "appears to be missing from all markets except US" I thought, here we go again
  • Switzerland - Also removed here.But a very interesting fact is, that bing chose not to drive through the street I live in (but to circumvent the quarter) although it would've been much quicker. I wonder why? Maybe because it's illegal to drive through without actually living here :/
  • Working here in NZ 7712 :)
  • Seems to be gone in South Africa too.