14 DAY TRIAL // The rumored Microsoft Pink project seems to be shaping up after all, under the form of a new mobile phone, one that would go beyond the boundaries of the Windows Mobile-powered handsets currently available, and which is also expected to come to the market featuring integration with a wide range of mobile services. Some of these services should be connected with the already existing Zune, while others have been reported to come for the entire range of Windows Mobile-running devices.
There is no official word on the presumed phone coming from Redmond, yet it seems that some more details on it have emerged into the wild. One thing that should be mentioned here is that there will not be a handset coming from Microsoft, though the company seems to be working on a Windows Mobile 7 Chassis 1, which should be the core of said Pink device, as Mary Jo Foley has it. At the same time, the Chassis might also be used in other mobile phones that will feature the upcoming Windows Mobile 7 platform, due next year.
According to Mary Jo Foley, said Chassis should bear the following specifications: ARM v6+, L2 Cache, VFP, Open GL ES 2.0 graphics HW processor, 256MB+ DRAM, 1G+ Flash (at least 512MB fast flash – 5MB/s unbuffered read @4K block size) memory, 3.5-inch or higher display with a WVGA (800×480) or FWVGA (854×480) resolution, multi-touch capabilities, Start, Back, Send and End controls are required (soft controls allowed as long as they are always present), while the battery of the phone should be able to meet Days of Use LTK requirements.
The aforementioned specs continue with a series of peripherals and options for the Chassis, which include: 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 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
Redmond-based Microsoft has been rumored a few times before to be working on the development of its own branded mobile phone, yet the company strongly denied it, stating on repeated occasions that it did not intend to come to the market with a Microsoft branded handset. While there is no room for arguing here, this doesn't mean that the company does not have some plans that involve hardware components for a mobile phone, and we already concluded before that they might materialize in the end under the form of a handset chassis.
The presumed chassis is confirmed by a job listing on Microsoft's site, which shows that the company is looking for a Windows Mobile Chassis Principal PM Architect, and says that the job would imply working with its Mobile Device Strategy and Commercialization group (MDSC), which is focused on the management of the WM hardware ecosystem – hardware platform definition (Chassis specifications), reference platform and BSP development, and WM handset commercialization are included here. In addition, the job post also talks about the possibility to “define functional and hardware requirements for current and future cellular platform specifications (Chassis specs),” that the one taking the job will have.