Looks like Dell is back in the mobile business - and this time seriously. Engadget just got its hands on Dell's roadmap and according to these PowerPoint slides, Dell plans with a Windows Phone 7 smartphone. Running "Windows Mobile 7" the Dell Lightning is powered by a 1 GHz Qualcomm CPU and features quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE as well as triband UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA at either 850/1900/2100 MHz (AT&T and Europe) or 900/1700/2100 MHz (T-Mobile U.S. and Europe). Furthermore it's said that the device supports WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, GPS and an FM radio and features an accelerometer, compass, proximity sensor and ambient light sensor.

The Dell Lightning features a portrait QWERTY slide-out keyboard and a 5 megapixel autofocus camera. The 4.1" WVGA capacitive touchscreen is said to be OLED and the device is expected to features 1 GB ROM, 512 MB RAM. Quite unusual is the fact, that the device is said to feature a microSD card slot because Microsoft said that Windows Phone 7 smartphones won't feature memory expansion.

According to Engadget, a release in Q4-2010 is mentioned with a possible LTE update for Q4-2011.

Cheers ~ Arne