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A couple of years ago there weren’t many people who knew what Microsoft’s Windows Phone was, and the number of its real fans was even less. Now, after the contract Microsoft had signed with Nokia, WP has become much more popular, and Microsoft started spending more time and efforts on developing its platform and making it even better. Windows Phone’s legendary Apollo version (which will most likely end up being called WP 8 after all) is still in works, but Microsoft doesn’t waste time and has almost finished the more “modest” version of the platform, the Tango.

Several days ago some screenshots demonstrating Windows Phone 7.5 Tango leaked. Now some other details about this platform versions are revealed. First of all, we know that very soon Tango will debut on Nokia’s Lumia 610. Well, this could have been expected taking into account the relationship of these two companies.

The Tango is more like an update to the previous Mango version of WP than an independent platform. Some of the features were removed from it to make it “lighter,” so the Tango can run even on processors with low clock rates and a small amount of RAM. On the other hand, now apps can’t run in the background any longer (which is a big shortcoming, I think), but music can still be played.

Anyway, we shouldn’t think that Tango is a low-end platform with no improvements at all. Actually, it does have improvements, for example, it supports MMS. Microsoft is also planning to expand the Windows Phone Marketplace – 20 new countries will be added to the list of supported countries, so WP Marketplace will become available for 63 countries.

The new Windows Phone Tango is expected to be released in April, so most likely that’s when Nokia’s low-cost WP-based devices (the Nokia Lumia 610 being the first among them) will be launched, too.