A 320-by-320-Pixel Window Mobile Smartphone in Development

A Microsoft employee has tacitly admitted that at least one company is working on a Windows Mobile device with a 320-by-320-pixel touchscreen.

Previous versions of this operating system did not support this screen resolution, but the recently-released Windows Mobile 6 does.

In his recent discussion of support for 320-by-320-pixel displays in the on the Windows Mobile Team Blog, Mike Calligaro said:

I’m certainly not going to announce any devices that will use this new resolution.  But you can assume that we didn't go through the large task of supporting 320x320 for our health.

Who Could It Be?

Anyone trying to guess which company might be interested in releasing a 320-by-320-pixel device probably won't have to think very long before coming up with an obvious candidate: Palm, Inc.

This company has been making Palm OS-based Treos with this screen resolution for years, but so far its Windows Mobile-based models have been forced to use 240-by-240-pixel displays because, as mentioned earlier, previous versions of this operating system didn't offer 320-by-320-pixel support.

Palm has already said it intends to release smartphones based on Windows Mobile 6, and it now seems likely these will have the same screen resolution as this company's models running the Palm OS.

Whichever company or companies it is, the devices will have to be run either Windows Mobile 6 Profession or Classic, and therefore have a touchscreen. Windows Mobile 6 Standard, the version for smartphones without touchscreens, does not support 320-by-320-pixel displays.

Related Articles

• Microsoft, Meet Common Sense -- 2/19/2007
• Microsoft Announces Windows Mobile 6 -- 2/8/2007
• Report of Free Windows Mobile 6 Licenses an Oversimplification -- 3/6/2007