Windows Phone Thoughts: The Dell Lightning: One Hot Windows Phone 7 Device!

We knew that Dell was one of the Windows Phone 7 launch partners, but I wasn't expecting something like this from them - to be honest, I didn't know what I was expecting - but the Lightning looks awesome! I'm digging that keyboard if the device thickness is kept under control. I generally adore my HD2, but the on screen keyboard sucks. It really, really sucks. Until someone can come up with a software keyboard as good as what Apple has on the iPhone, I really want to have a hardware keyboard on my next phone.

Engadget has a few slides from a leaked PowerPoint deck, but the basic rundown is a 1 Ghz Snapdragon processor (the QSD8250), a 4.1 inch OLED screen at WVGA (800 x 480), AT&T and T-Mobile 3G support (in the same model? Maybe two models?), a five megapixel autofocus camera (I think I see a flash there too), 1 GB of Flash memory with 512 MB RAM, and 8 GB of storage on an attached-to-the-motherboard microSD card (presumably). It also has a GPS, accelerometer, compass, FM radio, and apparently...full Flash support. Flash support? Really? Hrm. Not sure if I buy that - Microsoft has been pretty up-front about the lack of Flash support at launch. Q4 is the release date, so no surprises there. The surprise? Apparently it's going to get an upgrade to LTE in Q4 of 2011. An OEM willing to offer a significant device upgrade a year after it comes out? Times have changed folks - and that's a good thing. Hop on over to Engadget to check out the device.

So you Windows phone 7 haters - still planning on staying away? ;-)