Phones running Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 operating system are due to hit the market later this year. The world will be paying attention to what Nokia is going to be announcing, but let’s not forget that there are other companies who are also making Windows Phones. According to data from Nielsen, Windows Phone penetration hit 1.3% in the United States during Q2 2012. When you break things down by vendor, Nokia’s Windows Phones are in the hands of just 0.3% of smartphone owners. Meanwhile, HTC’s and Samsung’s Windows Phones both have 0.5% to call their own.
Statistics aside, what we want to know is just what sort of devices are we going to see over the coming months? According to Unwired View, one model we can look forward to is the Samsung SGH-i687. We don’t have any photos of the device, or a concrete spec sheet, but we do know, courtesy of an XML file on Samsung’s servers, that it’s going to have a screen that pushes 800 x 480 pixels. We know it’s going to run Windows Phone 8 because that XML file also says the SGH-i687 has support for IE 10, something that’s exclusive to the next version of Windows Phone.
Does this mean Samsung isn’t going to make a 720p enabled Windows Phone? No, but considering that Samsung is having trouble making enough components to feed demand for the Galaxy S III, what makes you think they’ll let any of their precious HD screens go towards a device running a smartphone OS that the market has rejected? Also, Samsung could very well be positioning the SGH-i687 as a budget Windows Phone. We can only speculate at this point.
Why is screen resolution so important? Two reasons. One, screens are typically the most expensive component inside a smartphone. Making use of a lower resolution panel allows significant cost savings. And two, if you’re going to buy a device that you’re going to be looking at from the second you wake up to the final minutes before you go to sleep, you want everything to look nice and sharp.