Windows Phone 7 Chasis Specs

[Nurhisham Hussein]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://wmpoweruser.com/?p=7528' target='_blank'>http://wmpoweruser.com/?p=7528</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"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.'"</em></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>It's no secret that Microsoft is playing catch-up in the smartphone market - nor that hardware-software integration has always been a problem for Windows Mobile from way back in the day. Microsoft's approach has heretofore been hardware agnostic which meant that not only have some manufacturers issued models that were under-powered for the OS, but that even those devices with sufficient horses didn't always have the response time one would expect from examining the raw specs. Partly that was because hardware advances didn't keep up with the OS (especially with the transition to WM5), as well as the OS not being optimised for specific hardware. With Windows Phone 7 (I'm still trying to get to grips with the change in terminology - again), MS is hoping to change all that by specifying some pretty steep minimum hardware requirements (including multi-touch), which also hopefully means that the OS code will be optimised to that hardware. Too little too late? Possibly - it'll be another year before we see any WP7 devices, and none of MS' competitors are going to stand pat in the meant time.</p>

[whydidnt]

It's certainly a step in the right direction. We obviously don't want to see phones from 6 manufacturers that are all identical except for the name plate. By the same token, MS needs to make sure the hardware is sufficient to deliver an excellent users experience. Microsoft is taking soooo long to bring this to market, let's hope it is truly a leap-frog technology, and not just catching up to what others are doing. If it's just playing catch-up they will likely fail.

I'm also hoping Microsoft has figured out that these portable devices are more than just PC companions, and they work not just on the UI, but also on the core functionality of software, such as mail, browser, etc. They can no longer purposely limit the functionality to protect their desktop market share and succeed. Finally, let's hope one or two of the OEMs figure out that when people have been able to by a 32 GB iPhone or Nokia N97 for several months, releasing a "top-of-the-line" phone with 512 MB of ROM is NOT competing. MicroSD is slower and you still can't buy a 32 GB MicroSD anyway. This has been one of my biggest gripes for the last several years. Why don't we see any Windows Phones targeting the entertainment sector with lots of built in storage?

[dd-mj]

I am nearing the end of my patients with the MS platform. Which is sad since I have had just about every generation of wince device since the Velo and Nino.

It seems to me that the next big leap is a cell phone which bridges the gap between a portable PC and a phone. If I could use my phone with a wireless keyboard, mouse and wireless/wired monitor, then I can travel without bringing my bulky laptop. Most of what I need is MS Office, very good web access (again very good web browser), etc. Touch screen is critical for decent web browsing IMHO - the iPhone has made that very clear.

Netbooks are cool but still too big. Why can't I have all that in my phone, the compute power is there today and the batter life is close. All I need is the additional connectivity and a much better user experience.

At this point I am about to give up on MS because I can't see the future. I have had the Blackjack II for 2 years now and essentially there have been no major changes to the platform in that time.

What really pisses me off is MS complete lack of investment browser technology. I am a firefox/chrome user simply because of performance. The phone browser is absolutely terrible compared to new phones like iPhone.

Can someone point me to an article which turns the on the light of hope? Otherwise I am going to jump to the darkside...and get off the MS platform.

-mj

[maxnix]

No one has come to grips with the limitations of the display size and formats. One really doesn't want to compose on a 3" screen even with VGA resolution. And driving even more accesories is not a good solution to the power limitations of current battery technology. And most of us don't want to carry even a 4" screen.

Then there are the carrier bandwidth problems. 4G rollouts will be interesting this year, but WP7 will not be there for them. So incompetent!

Is there no calendars nor internet access at Redmond?