When Microsoft prepped cell phone manufacturers about Windows Phone 7, they were crystal clear in defining the minimum hardware specifications each phone would have to support the mobile software--a touch screen, 1 GHz processor and 5.0 megapixel camera, for instance. Android's rapid development, on the other hand, makes minimum hardware specs murkier. They're documented but less understood than the distinctions between the software versions themselves.

As a result, we've combed through page upon thrilling page of compatibility document to bring you the minimum hardware requirements of your Android phone and breaking down what that means.

Before we begin, note that Google has not posted documentation for Android 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, or 2.0.1; the company cites technical reasons. Also note that we omit comparing Apple's iPhone, BlackBerry smartphones, and Palm phones because they're closed manufacturing systems.

Android 1.6, 2.1, 2.2 (* not required for v. 1.6)	Windows Phone 7
QVGA (240x320 pixels) touch screen	Capacitive WVGA resolution (800x480 pixels) touch-screen display (eventually opening up to HVGA) (480x320 pixels))
Virtual keyboard support	Virtual keyboard support
n/a	1GHz processor
Must have a USB connection that connects to a standard USB-A port	No manufacturer skins like HTC Sense or Samsung TouchWhiz
92MB RAM; 150MB user storage	256MB RAM; 8GB flash storage
2-megapixel camera	5-megapixel camera with LED flash, hardware shutter button
Home, Menu, and Back functions available at all times	Start, Search, Back hardware buttons
Wireless high-speed data standard capable of supporting 200Kbps; like EDGE, EV-DO, HSPA, 802.11g (Android 1.6 requires Wi-Fi)	DirectX GPU support
Accelerometer*	Accelerometer
Compass*	Compass
GPS receiver*	GPS receiver
Bluetooth transceiver*	Bluetooth transceiver
n/a	Ambient light sensor
n/a	Proximity sensor
n/a	FM radio

'Must' versus 'should'
While this list reflects the minimum requirements that Google imposes on manufacturers, it isn't the full story. The Android team makes many hearty recommendations in legalese that "may" or "should" be used when building Android-compatible phones. For instance, a Micro-USB port isn't mandatory, but it is encouraged, as are hardware buttons and a dedicated search key. The base storage requirements also appear low, but Google recommends 128MB RAM and at least 1GB of on-device user storage for things like the address book and photos.

As the chart shows, Google's requirements have been mostly unchanged since Android 1.6, with the exception of making GPS, Bluetooth, the accelerometer, and the compass mandatory.

Interestingly, there is one notable alteration that pops out. Android 1.6 specifically calls for Wi-Fi. (And we quote, "Device implementations must support 802.11b and 802.11g, and MAY support 802.11a.") Android 2.2 relaxes this to allow for lower-end phones to use data without using Wi-Fi. 1.6 also demanded volume controls. Not so in Android 2.0 documentation and above.

Decoding the specs
Looser hardware requirements don't necessarily mean poorer-quality devices, as high-end smartphones like the HTC Evo 4G and the new My Touch 4G attest. However, they do lower the barrier to making smartphones, and the combination of a mid-tier hardware like a 3.2 megapixel camera and 600 MHz processor mean that phones can be built--and sold--for less.

Take, for example, the $30 LG Optimus T and the $10 T-Mobile Comet. Such low prices (with a new two-year contract) will surely attract budget-conscious users who might otherwise not seek out a smartphone. We're going to start seeing many more feature-phone owners switch to some of these more entry-level Android devices, not all of them very good.

Despite the occasionally poor or puzzling choice in hardware design, many of these lower-end Android phones do come with Android 2.1 and Android 2.2, and they offer consistently good software perks for users on any device--Google Maps with Navigation and the integrated Google Account address book are some favorites.

Stricter minimum requirements, like those found in Windows Phone 7 devices, do ensure a basic level of quality. At this point in its product life cycle, Windows Phones offer among the fastest processing speeds on the market. However, Microsoft's basic smartphone requirements pose no guarantee that manufacturers will produce a compelling product. We certainly found the HTC Surround--with its slide-out Dolby Mobile speakers--less compelling than the Samsung Focus and the Dell Venue Pro.

Comparing Android and Windows Phone's minimum specs does tell us at least one thing, though--that we'll continue seeing Android phones in a broader range of shapes, sizes, and levels of power than you will a Windows phone. At least for now.

Originally posted at Android Atlas

It began innocently enough--a promotional blog post about Microsoft's newest version of Internet Explorer 9. But in less than a week, it became an illustration of just how rapidly misinformation moves through a hot and increasingly important corner of the software market.

The browser market was already competitive a year ago, but the arrival of IE9, currently in beta testing, has added even more energy to the competition. That's because Microsoft has placed support for a host of modern Web technologies front and center, transforming IE from a drag on the Internet into an ally in developers' efforts to bring everyone a more powerful Web.

IE6, nearly a decade old but still widely used, has saddled Microsoft with a reputation for browser neglect. So what could be more eye-catching than the news that IE9 not only is back in the game, but that it leapfrogged the competitors?

Alas, as with many good stories, the truth turns out to be less dramatic and but harder to find. The IE9-is-better idea triggered teeth-gnashing on a Web standard mailing list and a hastily published disclaimer by the World Wide Web Consortium that's developing many of those Web standards.

The episode shows the difficulties of keeping track of a browser market in the throes of breakneck change. Even those creating the yardsticks to measure the progress struggle to keep up.

IE9 and standards support
What happened with IE9? Last week, Microsoft released the sixth "platform preview" version of IE9. At the same time, browser makers had begun submitting test results to a new W3C suite of HTML5 standards compliance tests.

When Microsoft discussed the new IE9 version on its IEBlog, the company included a link to the tests, calling them "an early version of the W3C's Official HTML5 Test Suite Conformance Results."

Shortly after came the headlines: "W3C Says IE9 Is Currently the Most HTML5-Compatible Browser" from Slashdot. "IE9 Outperforms Other Browsers for HTML5 Compliance" from ReadWriteWeb. "IE 9 Beats Chrome, Firefox, and Safari on Official HTML 5 Test" from Windows IT Pro.

Then came the alarmed reaction by those creating the standards. The W3C page, it turned out, was preliminary at best.

"This test suite is vastly incomplete. Publishing unverified results of a vastly incomplete test suite without a big fat warning is extremely silly. Why was this done?" said Anne van Kesteren, an Opera developer who works on standards issues, in a mailing list posting Tuesday.

Added Ian Hickson, the Google employee who's editing the HTML5 specification, "I agree with Anne that it's rather pointless to be publishing results for this test suite. Realistically speaking the test suite isn't even 0.1 percent complete yet."

Shortly after, the disclaimer arrived on the Web page with the results: "The HTML5 test suite is still being developed. The number of tests and the results on these tests will change. The results in this document may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by others documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite those results as other than work in progress and unstable."

In a presentation this week, leaders of the HTML5 effort said there are 215 tests included in the suite right now, with more than 600 on the way, and that the group needs "a lot more tests!"

So declaring IE9 the winner on the test at this stage is something like saying England is better than the United States because it's got lusher lawns. The full range of tests aren't yet available.

Even worse, HTML5 is only part of the full range of Web technologies that are arriving. Others include Scalable Vector Graphics and Canvas for 2D graphics, WebGL for 3D graphics, Web Sockets for better live communications between servers and browsers, Web Workers for multithreaded JavaScript programs, and Cascading Style Sheets for increasingly advanced formatting.

Benchmark brouhaha
All these technologies are instrumental to transforming browsers from passive receptacles for server content into active engines for running Web-based applications. Accompanying the new standards is ever-faster JavaScript, the language for Web-based programs.

Browser makers are scrambling to attract and retain users. As new features emerge, a golden age of Web demos has begun with helicopter games, ruffling curtains, exploding videos, computer aquariums, virtual reality, jiggling balls, and blooming flowers.

But what if you want something more authoritative? A natural way to get a handle on the chaos, of course, is to measure whose browser can run Web-based programs the fastest, or build Web pages to tally who supports what new features. Such seemingly neutral areas are where the problems are cropping up.

Back in the days of yore--say, early 2010--there were two prevailing methods that were useful if not perfect. For measuring JavaScript program speed, one could run the SunSpider benchmark. For checking compliance with new-era standards, one could run the Acid3 test.

Now, though, the browser world has begun moving to new tests. The only problem with calling winners in the browser race, though, is that the new tests really aren't settled down yet. The W3C tests are just one illustration.

SunSpider stemmed from the WebKit project behind Apple's Safari browser and, more recently, Google's Chrome and any number of mobile browsers. Dissatisfaction is brewing with what's now a relatively elderly test, however.

"Because of...all the progress each browser vendor has made over the last several years, SunSpider is no longer particularly useful as a JS benchmark," Asa Dotzler in a blog post last week. "This is kind of obvious when you see that all of the top scores are pretty much tied. One one-hundredth of a second (across 26 tests) separates the slow from the fast, and that's just not particularly meaningful."

Google found SunSpider wanting, too, and introduced its own V8 JavaScript benchmark suite. The first version arrived with Chrome, more than two years ago, but it's now up to its sixth revision.

And in September, Mozilla released Kraken, a new JavaScript speed test. It was developed to try to be closer to real-world computing challenges.

Benchmarking is ever an imperfect science, to be sure. It's hard to measure the full breadth of computing chores, hard to weight tests toward the important components, hard to account for different hardware and network constraints, hard to factor in the latest technology. To draw a parallel from the auto industry, miles-per-gallon ratings for cars are reasonably useful--until electric vehicles come along.

And just as cataloging HTML5 feature support is a narrower task than the full panoply of Web standards, clocking JavaScript is only one aspect of browser performance. There's also the time to show a Web page, network performance, scrolling fluidity, and any number of other matters. Microsoft has been releasing a series of tests that exercise several parts of the browser--naturally the IE9 versions shine when it comes to the matter of hardware acceleration.

All these tests are useful--as is Find Me By IP's browser support test and the HTML5 test site.

Unfortunately, it'll take time for the testing community to converge on new tests, even assuming the standards settle down enough to create meaningfully complete tests in the first place.

So for the time being, we'll all have to live with inconvenient ambiguities in browser testing. Sounds like good practice for the real world.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg today may have disappointed some people who were hoping to see Facebook release a phone. "There are rumors out there that Facebook is building a phone," Zuckerberg said this morning at the company's mobile event at its headquarters. "No."

However, Android and iPhone users will have something to look forward to. In addition to announcing platform changes, Zuckerberg shared some updates to Facebook for iPhone and Android. The iPhone app will be receiving Facebook Groups, which recently made its debut on the social network. Facebook Places, its listing service, is also getting updated, and will include friend-tagging. In addition, after you check in to a location with Places, you'll be able to add a photo.

Updates will be more significant on the Android app. "The Android app has traditionally been a little bit behind," Zuckerberg said. As it happens, Google bought the company that Facebook was going to use to help build its Android app. The changes to the Android app will close the gap between the two smartphone platforms and bring about more parity. In addition to the interface changes that could arise, Facebook for Android will also include Places and Groups for Android.

The updated Facebook and Android apps will be available beginning today (now) in the Android Market and iPhone App Store, and will roll out to U.S. users. Local deals are only available for iPhone at launch; only about 50 percent of users will see it in the updated app today, a Facebook spokesperson told CNET. International users will have to wait it out for now.

Stay tuned for more to come, and check out our live blog for all the announcement details.

Updates at 11:55 a.m. PT and again at 12:40 p.m. PT: Added details about download availability and corrected the type of tagging included in the app.

It may be hard to believe that it's already November, but the 2010 holiday shopping season is just about upon us. With that in mind, Iron Horse Interactive has launched Giftmeister, an online social shopping tool that should be of particular interest to CNET readers.

Rather than focusing on just any old gifts, Giftmeister aims to help users find, purchase, and give tech products. The service offers a catalog of more than 225,000 gadgets, with live pricing from both online and brick-and-mortar retailers, such as Best Buy and Target. The tool also caters to shoppers on-the-fly with a free mobile app for the iPhone, with one for the Android OS forthcoming. The apps include LBS functionality that can provide users with directions to nearby stores.

There are two main functions for Giftmeister: to find gifts for fellow techies and to make a wish list for yourself to share with friends and family. To do this, you can search with keywords, or use the gift finder carousel. This tool lets you select a gender, price range, and persona and then provides a variety of gift-worthy gadgets. The variety of price ranges and personas (with choices such as Game Nut and Techno Geek) is impressive, as is the number of overall results populated. However, I did notice during initial testing that the gift selections didn't seem to vary much from persona to persona. Regardless, it's a great free service to have on hand if you're a gadget hound or have techie loved ones.