HP floats a new Windows 10 smartphone that could replace your laptop
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}HP Elite X3 (left) (HP)
Hewlett Packard’s new Windows Phone could be the only laptop you’ll ever need.
That’s the idea behind HP’s Elite X3 smartphone -- which crams laptop-like hardware into a smartphone -- introduced this week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
The Elite X3’s raw specs bear this out. A giant 6-inch AMOLED display (2,560x1,440), 16-megapixel rear camera, a 2.15GHz quad-core Snapdragon 820 processor, 64GB of storage; 4GB of RAM, a MicroSD card slot for up to 2TB of additional storage, USB Type-C connector (the new connector tech used on laptops), a massive 4,150 mAh battery, and, of course, Windows 10 Mobile software.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}But that’s only half the story. HP will also offer an optional 12.5-inch laptop that is built to run on top of the phone's hardware. In other words, the laptop is technically just a display, keyboard, and battery that uses the phone's hardware to run Windows.
If you need an even larger display, the phone can plug into a dock which connects to a desktop display, keyboard, and mouse.
All of this is predicated on Microsoft's Continuum technology, which allows you to quickly switch from the smartphone’s small screen to a laptop or a desktop monitor. While Continuum is not a full-blown desktop experience, it can come pretty close when, for example, using Microsoft Office applications, a browser, and other apps designed for Continuum. And HP intends to go beyond Continuum by providing a way to run standard Windows 10 desktop applications, which typically require an Intel laptop processor.
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The end of Windows Phone? The Elite X3 comes against a backdrop of a running obituary for Windows Phone. Critics have declared that the Windows Phone platform is dead because it has never been able to make a dent in Apple’s iOS and Android and, as a result, has never been able to attract a lot of apps.
Which is true. But HP is targeting its phone as an extension of the Windows 10 desktop rather than just a standalone Windows 10 phone. So, to even better replicate the full Windows desktop experience, HP developed so-called “software virtualization” to allow customers to take older Windows applications and run them via the cloud on the Elite X3.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Time will tell if the concept has legs. The Elite X3 is slated to be released this summer. No pricing has been announced.