Microsoft confirms ‘chassis’ concept for Windows Mobile 7, names Acer as WM7 OEM
James McCarthy, Microsoft’s business marketing manager, has confirmed in a ITPro article that Microsoft is specifying certain strong minimum specs for Windows Mobile 7 devices to ensure the new mobile OS runs well and gives a good consumer experience.
Said McCarthy “In the future, we are looking to deepen our development work with a handful of key OEMs at the hardware design phase, with much more carefully defined hardware specifications to match software requirements, which in turn will deliver even more powerful mobile experiences for our customers.
This has led to this chassis’ concept that is familiar to the work Microsoft does with hardware partners in the PC industry to create high quality products.”
According to earlier leaks there will be at least 2 “Chassis” specifications, describing pretty high end devices. Chassis 1 specs is said to be as below:
WM7 Chassis 1 Specification
Core requirements:
Processor: ARM v6+, L2 Cache, VFP, Open GL ES 2.0 graphics HW (QCOM 8k, Nvidia “Tegra” AP15/16* and TI 3430 all meet spec)
Memory: 256MB+ DRAM, 1G+ Flash (at least 512MB fast flash – 5MB/s unbuffered read @4K block size)
Display: WVGA (800×480) or FWVGA (854×480) 3.5” or greater diagonal
Touch: Multi-touch required
Battery: Sufficient to meet Days of Use LTK requirements.
Controls: Start, Back, Send and End are required (soft controls allowed as long as they are always present).
Peripherals:
Camera: 3MP+, flash optional, 2nd camera optional (VGA resolution sufficient)
GPS: aGPS required
Sensors required: Light Sensor, Compass (3 axis, 5 degrees, 100 Hz sample rate), Accelerometer (3 axis, 2mg resolution, 100 Hz sample rate)
USB: High speed required, 20 MB/s transfer rate.
BlueTooth: BT2.1 required, must run MSFT BT stack, CSR BlueCore6 or later recommended.
Wi-Fi: 802.11B/G required, must run MSFT Native Wi-Fi stack, Atheros 6002 or Broadcomm 4325 recommended.
Connectors: Micro USB and 3.5mm Audio required.Options:
FM tuner: If tuner HW is present it will be detected and supported by the Media application.
Haptics
SD Card (Micro SD recommended)
DPAD, qwerty or 12/20 key keyboards all optional
McCarthy also names HTC and Acer specifically as Windows Phone 7 OEMs.
“So Microsoft will not be creating its own smartphone using Windows Phone 7, but will work more closely with OEMs such as HTC and Acer to create the hardware that will incorporate Windows Phone 7 as a key factor in the phone’s design.” he said.
McCarthy was however unwilling to give a timescale for the arrival of Windows Mobile 7.
“Steve Ballmer has mentioned publicly that Windows Mobile 7 is slated for release in 2010 and we’re always working with our key OEM and operator partners on future products, although we have nothing formal to announce for now.”
Read the full ITPro article here.
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Sounds amazing. Something we should have had at least last year.
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KennyB123 Reply:
September 9th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Agreed – I want Windows Mobile 7 to really bring Windows phones back into the hearts of the Iphone-impaired. But, the longer this stuff goes unreleased, the harder it will be to bring the brainwashed back into the fold. Light a fire, Microsoft!
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This will be great
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The requirements are missing a D-Pad, but otherwise okay.
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Peter Reply:
September 10th, 2009 at 3:33 am
Yeah, or at least a G1-like ball or a samsung-like sensor. They should put DPADS, no matter how small they have to make them. The Axim X50X51 had tiny DPADs but were still usable.
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foaf Reply:
September 10th, 2009 at 11:22 am
My Touch HD has the specified "Start, Back, Send and End" and it's perfect for me.
Really, there is no need to enforce a D-Pad – it should be optional to manufacturers so that some handsets have them and some don't.
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Mmmm… can't wait for those Tegra based phones to drop.
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Can’t wait for WM7-Tegra-based phones!
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This is great stuff, I have hope WM again after looking at those specs and seeing that MS seems devoted to provide a good user experience in v7.
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"Touch: Multi-touch required" Does this mean no resistive screens? or does it mean they have to be next gen resistive screens? I really hope they put in multi-touch resistives instead of the easy capacitive option.
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I thought this was interesting:
Connectors: Micro USB and *3.5mm Audio required*.
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This is all good. But I'm afraid it could be a bit too late. Android is already leaping into the scene. This WM7 Tegra phone better come sooner than that, with a qwerty keypad, please.
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3.5mm Audio required, 3.5mm Audio FUCKING required GOT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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da29 Reply:
September 11th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LMAO!!!!!
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Surprisingly, these specs are only enough to "catch up" to the iPhone 3GS. Come on MS.. bring it instead of being the last to the game with mediocre performance as your usual M.O.
Sadly, as Sony has proven time and time again, hardware is not the name of the game, only superior integration is as Apple trodded all over Sony.
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"GPS: aGPS required"
Means that to install WinMo 7, device musth ave GPS?
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Memory: 256MB+ DRAM
i*iots! winxp works fine with this capacity of RAM. Will be WM7 better than XP!?
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