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Comment by Gustomaximus | Hacker News Reader

I'm amazed MS have dont this with before a genuine attempt at phone that docks and becomes your PVC.

Microsoft are so well placed to create and distribute what is bound to become a popular from factor. This would work on so many levels. The light-weight basic consumer that doesn't need a gaming/ or other high power rig at home. Developing countries where people can't afford a laptop and high-end phone could now get a phone plus a screen/keyboard at home. And the biggest sell is at the enterprise level. Companies could issue phones only and have a heap of docking stations. It wouldn't suit everyone but many would.

Time to re-visit Ubuntu Touch and see how they are getting along I guess.

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The idea of an x86 PC/phone is essentially dead because of Intel.

"Intel’s plans to discontinue its Atom chips for phones and some tablets may not have killed the dream of a Microsoft Surface phone—just the piece of it that made it so enticing.

In the wake of a restructuring that relegated the PC to just another connected device, Intel confirmed Friday that it has cancelled its upcoming SoFIA and Broxton chips. That leaves Intel with just one Atom chip, Apollo Lake, which it had slated for convertible tablets.

...fans of the platform have long hoped for a phone that could run native Win32 legacy apps as well as the new UWP platform that Microsoft has made a central platform of Windows 10. The assumption was that this would require a phone running on an Intel Atom processor. Intel’s decision eliminates that option."

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3063672/windows/the-death-of-...

Pity, I would've bought one without hesitation. In theory, one could have a ARM-based Chromebook/phone or WinRT/phone but there's not enough software out there for ChromeOS or UWP to make it attractive.

>Microsoft are so well placed to create and distribute what is bound to become a popular from factor.

There already is a popular form factor that companies issue, and folks in developing countries purchase (in addition to us on HN): the smartphone.

If you're not intensely inputting typed data, there's no need for a keyboard. And if you are, then likely your company issues/reimburses-for a device with a keyboard.

But otherwise, this is why smartphones are ubiquitous. Many more people are content consumers than content creators.

And for those who want a bigger screen, a tablet works just fine. Assuming both your phone and tablet have the same OS, most things should be automatically synced between the two.

I have often wondered why MS hasn't been able to grab a significant chunk of the smartphone market by courting enterprise. Most people don't care about all the apps that are available to Android and Apple on their work phones and you would think being able to run the same operating system across all of your companies PCs and smartphones would be a major draw.

It hasn't helped that so few of their phones are available on Verizon, which is the largest carrier enterprises predominantly use in the US. I haven't ever seen a large business talk about switching their carrier to get a specific phone, though I guess it happens sometimes, somewhere.

> Most people don't care about all the apps that are available to Android and Apple on their work phones

You can see this clearly reflected in RIM...err...Blackberry's bottom line.

Just because it runs Windows doesn't mean it runs great on it. A lot of enterprise apps are archaic (over 10+ years), desktop only and used by only a few hundred to a few thousand users. There's very little incentive to remake a desktop app into a mobile app so using the desktop version on a Windows phone doesn't make sense.

They did this already.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/29/8513519/microsoft-windows-...

I don't want some simulation, I want the same OS running on my phone. Phones have been powerful enough for a while to run real OSs.

Phone CPUs are (often barely).

Phone batteries generally aren't.

If your connected to a docking station for monitor access then you don't need to worry about battery life. Other than that windows does not really take much power in laptop mode. Smartphones have surpassed low end laptops for a while in CPU / RAM. It's just not an x86 CPU.

If my mobile phone has to be docked for most of the day, it loses most of its value and mobility.

The idea is it's docked when you're stationary, and mobile when you are. It fits what your doing.

It doesn't fit what I'm doing if what I'm doing is being mobile and want my phone to last 18-36 hours with reasonable battery size and weight.

If you mean the normal smartphone 2-3days standby + 6 hours use then that's a non issue with a standard desktop OS (Win, OS X, Linux). The problem in making a laptop OS usable with a smartphone form factor.

If you want 18+ hours watching YouTube then nobody does that in a cellphone form factor.

I'm skeptical, as my current iPhone 5S can't manage 2 full days without charging, usually in wifi range, and very little video. Mail, calendar, iMessage, light web, probably less than 20 minutes talk per day on average.

Granted, it's 2 years old (or so), but I have to believe that Apple developed iOS with an eye towards optimizing battery life rather than adapting the UI of OSX.

Yeah, I should have mentioned but that's what I meant by "genuine attempt". They never really pushed this. These things dont typically happen organically. Even the first iPhone sales were pretty average.

I actually bought a cheap Lumia to test this release out but on release they decided to drop my phone (which they already announced as compatible) from the upgrade so I never got to try it out.

Did anyone give it a go? Like/not?

>Did anyone give it a go? Like/not?

Yeah, wife and I watch netflix / youtube in edge on continuum all the time on my lumia 950 (great combo with t-mobile binge/on). It really works well as wireless pc mouse / remote with the wireless display adapter from bed (seemless, 1-touch, no issues for me). I don't use it for actual computing since I have surface / macbook for that.

I've used it to Miracast things to my TV (via the Xbox One), and nearly gave a PowerPoint presentation from it once. That's where I see it being most real world useful is for last minute presentations where I already have easy access to my .pptx files on my phone and can Miracast directly to some TV or projector.

It's also the interesting thing here too about how Continuum is in competition with the UWP that enables it: in my case all my devices run Windows 10 and have access to all the same apps. With roaming and cloud services I can just pull up that app on any other device and switch devices freely. I rarely need to Continuum cast to some other device within my home because that app and that data is already accessible there...

So I could see saving the day with a last minute PowerPoint presentation somewhere where the only laptop I thought to bring was my phone, but that is mostly it. If there were coffee shops or hot desk spaces or hotel rooms with Miracast-capable screens and bluetooth keyboards scattered around the country you could see it being even handier for things like random Word document writing on the go for the traveler that doesn't want to bring a laptop everywhere...

So I've liked it for what I've used it for and I can think of scenarios where I would use it more, but I find day to day I don't use it much.

Do any phones actually support this? Are there any x64 phones out there?

Can you install full windows apps on them or are you restricted to the app store.

Yes Lumia 950, 950XL support Continuum today. No, they aren't x64 phones and don't support x64 apps. They aren't restricted to the app store, you could sideload UWP apps if you had them. UWP apps these days are "full windows apps" for all intents and purposes these days. There may not be as many UWP apps right now as there are the long legacy of Win32 apps and the deep wells of Android and iOS apps, but there are some very good UWP apps out there, some of which are very useful in Continuum.

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