Minimum Requirements for WM 7 Devices

Microsoft seems very serious about its upcoming Windows Mobile 7 platform when it comes to the devices the OS would run on.
To ensure that WM 7 users get the best experience out of its upcoming mobile smartphone OS, Microsoft has laid down the minimum system requirements that would be necessary for a device to be WM 7 compliant. This is more or less similar to what Microsoft has done with its hardware partners in its PC Business. James Mc Carthy, a senior official from the company in a recent interview, confirmed the above.

This is not the first time that we have news emanating about the possibility of Microsoft laying down these Chassis specifications. What we are hearing this time is that there would be two chassis specifications one for mid range devices and the other for the higher end ones. The following are the specs that might just be the requirements for WM 7 to nestle inside your next smartphone. Mind you, the specs listed below are for Chassis 1, the high-end devices.

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


With the hardware requirements in place, all Microsoft needs now is one decent OS to back the hardware and computing prowess, it would get. Let s wait and watch how the WM 7 saga unfolds in 2010.