Microsoft business marketing manager James McCarthy has confirmed stories about a minimum system requirement of sorts for all new Windows 7 devices. Stories about this chassis were appearing in the Spring, so I’m not sure why it is big news, but it is reassuring to hear they are still committed to high-quality devices landing in stores.

The basic Windows 7 Chassis, once called Pink, I believe, looks like this:

WM7 Chassis 1 Specification

Core requirements:

• Processor: ARM v6+, L2 Cache, VFP, Open GL ES 2.0 graphics HW (QCOM 8k, Nvidia “Tegra” AP15/16* and TI 3430 all meet spec)
• Memory: 256MB+ DRAM, 1G+ Flash (at least 512MB fast flash – 5MB/s unbuffered read @4K block size)
• Display:  WVGA (800×480) or FWVGA (854×480) 3.5” or greater diagonal
• Touch: Multi-touch required
• Battery: Sufficient to meet Days of Use LTK requirements.
• Controls: Start, Back, Send and End are required (soft controls allowed as long as they are always present).

Peripherals:

• 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.

Options:

• 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

Microsoft has also announced HTC and Acer as OEM manufacturers for Windows 7, and has indicated they plan to work more closely with these and other OEM manufacturers as Windows 7 nears launch. You can read the article that got me on this track here, at itPro.com.