News · 24 Jun 2011 · MTW Editorial Team
A new picture of the recently unveiled Nokia Sea Ray (or Nokia SeaRay depending on the correct spelling) poped up on XDA earlier today (but dates back from last May) and shows that the hardware has yet to be finalized. As you can see in the picture above the device has on-screen buttons instead of the 3 hardware buttons mandated by the Windows Phone 7 hardware specifications. Many people think that what we are seeing above is fake but I can tell you that is most probably the real deal.
Stephen Elop made sure to hide the bottom of the device during his presentation because of this little issue. But why does the Sea Ray have those ugly on-screen buttons? Well, because this prototype is based on one of the Nokia N9 chassis that was designed by Nokia as seen in the picture below:
Given that this chassis doesn’t have the 3 hardware buttons Nokia had to find a work-around to test Windows Phone 7 on it. The Nokia N9′s 3.9″ screen has a resolution of 854×480; the 54 pixels at the bottom where used for the buttons and the result is that WP7 is now perfectly rendered in 800×480 which is the only supported resolution by the OS. The final design will most probably change and feature real hardware buttons at the bottom and a WVGA screen panel.
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