The first major announcement out of Microsoft’s Windows Phone Summit? A much-needed spec bump for the platform, which now supports dual-core processors, 720p displays and SD storage solutions. Finally, a grown-up operating system gets grown-up guts.
The supported resolutions now include WVGA, WXVGA and true 720p, and the platform will support quad-core processors as well. In fact, there’s support for up to 64 cores, which isn’t helpful for this year’s handsets but is still a nice little bragging point. SD card expansion is a welcome addition too; while Apple’s ignored it so far, it’s too popular a feature on Android for Microsoft to have ignored it much longer.
On the wonkier side of things, you’re looking at increased Java and HTML5 support, which will hopefully help Internet Explorer from being quite as pokey as it has been.
Overall, it’s a lot of keeping up with the Joneses; Microsoft’s not leapfrogging anybody here. But if you’re a Windows Phone fan, just catching up is improvement enough.