WP hardware to catch up by default via spec dead end?

Posted by markiz von schnitzel on April 4, 2012 08:26 am 19

I know many people believe WP has been, and still is, playing catch up with android ever since it came out. While that might be technically true looking on the spec sheets (which are apparently more important to some than the performance is), I never had that feeling, not even in the back of my head somewhere. I still find my old and trusty Omnia 7 to be great and modern.

That being said, looking at the specs of modern android smartphones, it occurred to me that there is practically no space to improve the spec sheet any more:

screen

With 300+ PPI 720P screens I can not imagine anyone wanting or making something like 900P or 1080P phones. It would bring only certain problems and no benefits AT ALL. Web pages would become unreadable and OS elements, if not scaled, unusable to some extent.

There is no way WP8 will not support 720P (probably going even higher, if the kernel rumors turn out to be true).

processor

Similar to the screen, I can not imagine that, any time soon, a mobile processor will have more than 4 cores. Again, WP8 will almost certainly support that.

storage

Storage is, after the screen, the biggest problem WP has right now. Expandable storage would obliterate that problem. It's only rumored, but it would be a suicide if they (MS) don't include that in WP8, which is why I believe they will.

RAM

Joshua Topolsky mentioned as a con that 900 has ONLY 512 mb or RAM. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around that. If the OS has an extremely small footprint and 512 is enough to run anything, I really don't see why RAM should even be listed in any, not just WP, spec sheet. It's the single most meaningless spec of them all. Or am I missing something?

camera

Only a rumor, but it's been said that WP8 will allow for OEM's to greatly customize the camera experience (I hope they keep the mandatory camera button). So that's it. Par.

battery life

I really don't have any numbers, but it's been said before, and more recently in 900 reviews, that WP is more energy efficient. So WP8 should be AT LEAST par that.

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For the conclusion, Android hardware OEM's have come to the dead end in spec sheet race. New differentiating factors should be battery life, design and build quality. And WP and android should be on even playing fields on that.


So is it safe to assume that WP will be hardware wise most definitely on par with android by the time, or shortly after, WP8 comes, or am I missing something obvious?