Windows Phone 7 Hardware Spec Updated

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It’s known that Microsoft has strict hardware specs out there that all manufacturers have to keep to when designing their phones, and now, Microsoft has changed them. It’s come out following the MIX developers conference in Las Vegas that Microsoft was quietly updated the hardware spec to include a second-generation  Snapdragon processor.

All new Windows Phone 7 phones going forward will be forced to ship with either the Qualcomm MSM7x30 or MSM8x55 series of processors, with a clockspeed of at least 800Mhz. During the presentation at MIX, Microsoft’s Istvan Cseri called it the “new” Qualcomm system on a chip, but it’s really not that new as we’ve seen it shipping on phones like the HTC Thunderbolt (which I reviewed and found suitably powerful) and the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, also known as the “PlayStation Phone”.

Other than that, everything appears to be fairly similar. Microsoft is staying with the 800×480 resolution, which kills the possibility of a Windows Phone 7. Redmond seems to want manufacturers to put Windows 7 on a tablet, not Windows Phone 7. They’re requiring a minimum of 256MB of RAM – I’d feel more comfortable with 512MB of RAM as a base, but they’re likely going a step down in order to free up some costs for the manufacturers.

No word on when we’ll start to see these new WP7 phones with the updated processors start to show up in stores. But, it looks like Microsoft is committed to keeping Windows Phone 7 an up to date platform, hardware wise, at least.