We received intelligence from an anonymous source in the US who claims that a tier-1 device manufacturer is testing Windows smartphone; not a surprise until we learnt that it was a Windows 8 smartphone rather than one either based on Windows Phone 7.5 or on Windows Phone Apollo - which is expected to launch towards the end of the year.

Our contact said that the phone - which was only glanced at rather than played with - will run on AT&T and will support LTE. It is also "pretty much all black honesty [sic] a bit ugly design" before adding that s/he hopes that "they would sleek it up before release".

The device had "at least a dual core" processor and had the same screen size as the Galaxy SII 4G. Could it be that some manufacturers plan to get Windows to run on smartphones? After all Fujitsu did get Windows 7 to run on an Intel x86 platform.

Given that Windows on ARM will be available for OEM/ODM only, it would make sense that some device makers will swap Windows Phone for a beefier, full on Windows operating system especially paired with a laptop dock device (like the Motorola Atrix docking station).