HP denies rumours Elite x3 is for the axe, admits coveting neighbour's OS HP Inc, the only phone vendor with a serious commitment to Windows 10 mobile, has refuted reports that it will kill off its HP Elite x3 enterprise phone this autumn. A German article on the Windows United blog claimed sales would cease from November 1. HP has said it will continue to sell the Elite x3 throughout 2018, and to …
Because there is almost no cost to having the mobile platform, it has the same code base and the OS is designed to run, essentially unchanged, on the hardware.
Because W10 runs on tablets, touch etc. and the Start screen are the same. Small tablets are barely different to a phone, tablets and PCs have the cellular stacks I imagine.
I also imagine the phone could have had multiple logins and such but that this is explicitly suppressed/removed.
It may also be the case that they will completely remove the Mobile-only parts and simply run full W10 on a phone platform when the ARM build of W10 is working.
That would mean having a 'phone-mode' of course, phones may run the same apps but phones work differently in other ways, albeit fewer and fewer of them. Hiding the mouse from the phone screen, which happens anyway I think if you use a PC with touch and actually use touch.
Ironically, Continuum is almost the only thing that would need to be removed, the second screen is just a second screen to a PC, different resolution perhaps but no different at otherwise.
Continuum has been ignored by MS but, even the little it does do can be useful, e.g. for showing PPs to people without using a laptop etc.
Windows 10 mobile has been forked from Windows 10 desktop.
So as there is a cost in keeping it going, presumably they're keeping it going because of some as-yet-unrevealed plan.
Win32 emulation on ARM, perhaps?
Microsoft apparently had a phone platform around x86 for a while and were pushing Intel to finally release a mobile CPU worth using, but Intel then pulled out of the mobile market altogether and screwed Microsoft in the process.
Enter emulation and Windows Phone with Continuum actually makes sense. That is, you use the native ARM apps wherever possible, and turn to emulation when you need the software and don't care about speed as much.
If Microsoft pulls that off, the winners will be those that held on to their 950 and 950 XL phones, as they're going to be plenty fast for running emulated win32 apps.
>Intel then pulled out of the mobile market altogether and screwed Microsoft in the process.Intel then pulled out of the mobile market altogether and screwed Microsoft in the process.
Licensing and customer experience on low power devices haven't been solved in a way which allows ms to leverage anything. The problem they will face in the future is that cloud licensing is very transparent. What happens when AWS offers everything but Visio? The universal directory and certain user identity driving rental revenues cuts both ways.
I've used a HP Slate6 6" Android 4.4.2 (KitKat) for a number of years now. Not bad for ~£150, though I had to replace the battery with an after-market one earlier this year.
The main problem - as with most vendors now - is a lack of support once the product is no longer "hot". I doubt that it'll get another Android update.
HP (use to) make good hardware. Software - less so.
".....doubt that it'll get another Android update...." So how many Android phones have any received real version updates? It seems the Android update path is the contractual renewal with the carrier, when you "update" to a newer version of Android by a complete hardware replacement.
And I really like it. OK I have to have an Android phone for all the apps - Xero, Chromecast and the like, but the x3 Elite is my number 2 phone. The android number 3 phone is a Kodak Ektra and that's quite nice.
But all this Windows Phone shenanigans is just treading water until next year when Surface Phone, er, surfaces, and that will take on the world.
Simon
I can't be bothered to check current pricing but;
One of our sales-folk saw and wanted these a bit back. I'm pretty sure that when we checked the laptop dock/case was almost as much as an actual laptop and the tablet dock/case was similarly comparible to tablet prices.
By the time you added the cost of the phone (the actual computer that makes all the above function) it was silly money.
Solution looking for a problem this, you can't whack a mobile phone into a fancy case that looks like a laptop, and charge i5 laptop money for it.
If the phone was "free" with the lappy or the tablet bit, we'd have probably got him one as a test, but it was creeping up towards the cost of something that far out performs it as an all round laptop or tablet.
It's a pity - the Elite x3 experience is actually really pretty good: the handset is well designed and powerful, and the Continuum/HP added value model works flawlessly, especially the docking station. The laptop shell is a beautiful piece of engineering. The obvious problem however is that nobody and their dog is buying Windows Mobile. If only they would have chosen Android, the whole ecosystem would make a lot of sense as a business solution. In the meantime, Samsung have stolen a march in this space with DeX (although they don't have anything like the beautiful HP laptop shell) and there are other interesting startups with offers in this area, such as Sentio.
Now, what am I going to do with my Elite x3 laptop shell?
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