The Nokia N8 running on the Windows Phone operating system, it may seem appealing to some but is it even technically viable? As we all know by now, Nokia announced a new alliance with Microsoft some weeks back and lots of us have been wondering if they would one day wake up to find their Nokia N8 S^3 OS phone has turned into a Windows Phone overnight.

Ever since the announcement at Mobile World Congress, in what now seems like a long time ago, it seems that whether or not the Nokia N8 would become a part of the Windows phone family has been a hot topic. The appeal of seeing one of Nokia’s highest-end mobile phones to date and adding a little Microsoft magic may be for some, however it’s unfortunately not likely at all to ever happen.

Sadly for those who may want the Windows Phone OS on their phone, the Nokia N8 doesn’t appear to meet the hardware requirements to run a Windows Phone operating system. Our beloved Nokia N8 runs on 680MHz, however the Windows 7 requirements state it needs a 1GHz ARM as a minimum. In regards to the memory, the Nokia N8 meets this requirement as it hits the very low-end barrier of 256MB.

Also required by WP7 is a capacitive touchscreen with a 480 x 800 resolution along with DirectX9 capabilities or higher. It’s clear to see that in its current version and format, the WP7 is far too power hungry for use with the Nokia N8, which will probably come as a relief to many Symbian fans across the world. Another notable aspect of the WP7 is that it is designed primarily to work with mobile phones that have three hardware buttons – as all us N8′ers know, the Nokia N8 comes only with one hardware button which is used for the main menu,

Will Microsoft lower some of its standards for its high-end WP7 smartphones? It will probably need to if its going to work its way down the food chain and into the realms of cheaper price points – as they discussed a lot at MWC 2011. This would then allow Nokia to develop the Windows Phone OS in partnership with their new friends over at Microsoft in order to work on the lower-end specification mobile phone and spreading themselves across the whole ecosystem as they like to call it.

The Nokia N8 not supporting Windows Phone is probably great news for most of us as Symbian^3 works rather well with this mobile phone. Nokia will be continuing to support the phone as is being proved already with the release of PR 1.1, PR 2.2 which is coming soon and PR 3.0 which are all due to be released over the next year or so. The Nokia N8 has plenty of life left, at least a few more years such as the life expectancy of its predecessor, the Nokia N97.

If you had the choice, would you rather have Symbian^3 or Windows Phone 7 on your Nokia N8? Or would you even be interested in a dual-boot? Let us know your thoughts.