This is part 2 of the Windows Phone 7 series.
From Microsoft said that they are issuing "tough, but fair" hardware requirements to manufacturers.
All Windows Phone 7 devices, at minumum, must include the following:
Buttons
1. Power/Sleep button - If the phone is off it will turn it on. If the phone is in use, a brief press of the button will turn off the display and will lock the phone. If the phone is not in use, a brief press of the button will wake up the phone.
2. Volume Buttons - The volume buttons are primarily used to adjust the volume of an active audio stream. This could be a phone call, music audio, radio audio, or an in-progress movie. When the audio stream is not active, the volume buttons are used to change the active sound profile. The volume control also exposes the audio transport controls such as previous and next. If there is an incoming call, the volume buttons will silence the ringtone. For an active audio stream playing, the volume buttons will change the volume level for the active audio stream. System sound events and effects are exempt. When a device is locked, the volume buttons should still be active and respond to the action taken. A developer cannot override this functionality. When a user presses and holds a volume button, it will do a key press repeat. Holding the volume up key will incrementally increase the volume.
3. Camera button - From a functional standpoint, the Windows Phone 7 camera button is dual action supporting full and half press modes. When a user initiates a full press, the phone will launch the camera application. If the user does a half press, the auto-focus feature is enabled. From a programmatic standpoint, applications will be able to launch the camera experience by calling the camera control API. Also, applications will be able to decide when and where the API is invoked.
4. The hardware back button is used to go back within an application or between applications. The application will allow the framework to perform the operation when the button is pressed. Also, the back button can close an on-screen keyboard, menus, dialogs, can navigate to a previous page, exit a search operation, or even switch applications. However, the principal usage is to move from the current screen to the previous one.
Note: The back button will not work as a backspace key to delete text input.
5. When the user presses the hardware button, it takes them to the start menu from anywhere on the device. This includes a running application.
6. The search button will launch the search experience for the user to find content from anywhere on the device.
Screen
Two types of screens will be available. Both of the screens are capacitive touch-screen, capable of supporting multi-touch and will be using OLED (“organic light emitting diode”) technology. OLEDs are different from the flat displays in the past because power consumption is directly proportional to the light emitted from the display.
1. The big screen - 4.3-inch with resolution of 480x800 (WVGA)
2. The small screen: 3.4-inch with resolution of 320x480(HVGA)
Note that Microsoft said that at launch all phones will be with the big screen.
Cameras
The minimum resolution for the main camera of Windows Phone 7 is 5mpix. The camera will support manual, macro, auto and touch focus. The camera software will support a lot of features like Panorama, Mosaic, Smile detection mode, Sequence mode, Timer and so on. Secondary camera is not requested. It’s not forbidden, but no more information for the secondary camera is presented in this time.
Keyboards
The on-screen or hardware keyboard can be used to input text on a Windows Phone. The on-screen keyboard is deployed automatically when an edit control becomes active. It closes when the user taps outside of the edit control. If a phone includes a hardware keyboard, the on-screen keyboard automatically closes when deployed. The Windows Phone 7 features several typing aides such as text suggestions and auto-correction. These features apply to both on-screen and hardware keyboard.
Hardware keyboard is not requested. It’s up to the manufacturer if the phone will have it or not. There are several hardware keyboards that may come available in the Windows Phone
7 including such designs as a pull out bar, a vertical slide configuration, or even a flip or swivel
orientation.
Windows Phone 7
will support only full alphabet layouts
- QWERTY, AZERTY, and
QWERTZ
. 12/-20 key layouts
will not be supported.
Wireless
There is no information about the Wireless yet. The only information is that the Wireless is requested for Windows Phone 7.
Bluetooth
Windows Phone 7 will have Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. The provided Bluetooth profiles are Hand-Free Profile (HFP), Headset Profile (HSP), Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP), and Phone Book Access Profile (PBAP).
CPU
The CPU of Windows Phone 7 will be ARMv7 based and the MINIMUM clock rate is 1 GH/z.
The latest news show us, that Windows Phone 7 will use a two core processor
.