Choosing a smartphone has never been easier. If you want excellent battery life, a snappy OS and regular updates, there is Windows Phone 7. If you want good value for money and the latest tech, Android is the obvious choice. If you want none of these things and you are willing to pay double, get an iPhone.

Although we like Windows Phone, we have a nit to pick with Microsoft’s hardware guidelines and its refusal to support the latest dual-core chips. However, it turns out Microsoft chose to skimp on dual-core support for purely practical reasons. The word on the street is that Redmond chose to hold off dual-core support due to its partnership with Nokia, although it was ready to deliver multi-core support in Mango.

Nokia engineers were new to the Qualcomm world, so they were unable to implement dual-core support in time and Microsoft simply stepped in to protect the strategic partnership. Samsung and HTC were more than ready to launch dual-core phones by the end of the year, and this would have rendered Nokia uncompetitive in the high-end.

The good news is that Nokia seems to be gearing up to launch numerous phones in 2012 and Microsoft hopes to sell about 100 million Windows Phone devices in 2012. Of course, dual-core support is the next step, but there is still no word on when to expect the first dual-core Windows phones.

More here.