Microsoft's Three Windows Phone 7 Chassis Designs Tipped

Details of Microsoft's hardware plans for Windows Phone 7 have leaked, courtesy of a Frankly Speaking podcast featuring Microsoft Australia Developer Evangelists Michael Kordahi and Andrew Coates.  According to the pair, Microsoft have narrowed down WP7 hardware to three chassis: Chassis 1, which is expected to incorporate all the devices set to launch later this year, will be the "big touchscreen" models with 1GHz processors and discrete GPUs.

As for Chassis 2, such handsets were compared to Palm Treo devices since they incorporate both hardware keyboards and touchscreens.  It's an odd comparison, though, as in a MWC 2010 prebrief with Microsoft they pointed out that their screen aspect/size rules might preclude certain candybar layouts.

Chassis 3 was left undetailed, though there was speculation that they could be candybar in format.  We'll find out more, hopefully, at the MIX 2010 conference in March, where Microsoft have said they'll be telling developers more about what hardware specifications they can expect to run their apps on.

[via Windows Phone Forums]