Part of Microsoft's announcements today regarding developer access to new Windows Phone 7 functions and capabilities focused on direct hardware support. The company said that it would be giving coders hardware access to components including the smartphone's camera and on-board sensors like gyroscopes and compasses. Problem is, it turns out that there just isn't gyro hardware on-board the current wave of Windows Phone 7 devices, so what are they going to when apps start looking for gyro input?

Next-gen WP7 smartphones, those designed from the ground up for Mango, will include gyroscope sensors for accurately measuring the phone's orientation. WPCentral reached out to Microsoft's Andrew Clinick to elucidate upon what the situation with apps would be when running on older, non-gyro hardware. The good news is that these devices will still be able to run the latest apps, just with lower precision; the phones will be able to use readings from their accelerometers, along with sensors like the compass, to simulate gyroscope data. Of course, the readings won't be as accurate as when using purpose-built gyro hardware, but in this case compatibility is easily the preferable end-goal.

Source: WPCentral