Windows Phone
A couple of years ago, the mobile version Windows was seriously called the 'third OS', but today smartphones on Windows Phone (Mobile) are hardly remembered. In June, the share of smartphones fell below 1%, now it is about a few tenths. Smartphones on Windows can be safely put on a par with phones on Firefox OS and other similar devices. Separately, all these words are familiar to customers, but they do not add up together.
Nevertheless, we will see at least a few smartphones on Windows in the new year. According to rumors, HP is preparing a new flagship smartphone at Windows, which may be presented in February. Moreover, it is believed that the main sponsor of the device is exactly MS. We are talking not only about financial support, but also about technologies and patents – the new product will receive a number of proprietary features of the Lumia line, such as Glance, ClearBlack Display, double-tap-to-wake, etc.
HP Elite x3 Smartphone
But even so, it's not entirely clear why HP needs this whole game. Still, releasing a smartphone on an OS that the creators themselves recognized as unsuccessful is still a pleasure. Let me remind you that even SatyaNadella himself admitted in an interview with WSJ that MS had completely missed this market.
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And MS itself needs an HP smartphone rather for show, as a formal confirmation that Windows Phone is still alive. The company plans to close the Lumia line, and when the Surface Phone comes out, it is still a mystery. After all, judging by the latest statements of SatyaNadella, modern flagships on Windows are not satisfied with the company:
“We will stay in the mobile market, not with the products defined by the current leaders, but with what we can do ourselves – with the most advanced mobile device.”
So while MS is thinking about the 'perfect mobile device', HP will have to release smartphones with Windows.
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According to rumors, Continuum will be improved in the second half of next year. Mobile devices on Windows will receive a special emulator that will allow running x86 applications on ARM64 devices. It is believed that this will be a significant advantage for corporate users.
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Additional screen
Mobile phone manufacturers have been experimenting with secondary displays for years. The idea of a second screen lies on the surface and looks very tempting at first glance. Especially from a marketing point of view, according to which two are always better and cooler than one.
But in reality it is difficult to justify the presence of an additional display in the device. Perhaps the only exception here are clamshell phones, where the presence of an 'external' screen is determined by the form factor itself. In other cases, everything is much less straightforward.
It is more convenient to use one large screen to display information than two small ones, because a full-screen application cannot be stretched over two screens. There were attempts to come up with something on this front, but no one succeeded in achieving success. An example is the Sony Tablet P, which, despite Sony's best efforts, has remained a stylish toy for those who like the weird.
There have been several attempts to use screens of two different types in one mobile device, usually E-ink plus something else. The most sensational example here is the YotaPhone, in which each screen had its own use case.
Firstly, it was possible to display some kind of static picture on the additional screen, practically without consuming the battery power. Secondly, it is much more pleasant to read text from displays based on e-ink. But although in words such a concept sounded very interesting, in practice there were almost no people willing to overpay for a second display. Such a device turned out to be too niche and incomprehensible.
Another example of a mobile device with two different displays is the Barnes & Noble NOOK eBook.
A small area of the color LCD display located at the bottom of the device acted as an additional control element. On this screen, you could display the keyboard, a list of settings, thumbnails of book covers, music player buttons, and so on. The solution is interesting, original, but again not very popular. Most buyers settled on the classic 'e-readers' with one single screen, without additional bells and whistles that take up extra space and do not affect reading in any way.
The company Apple went even further and in one of the latest versions of the MacBook decided to replace some of the usual buttons with such an additional display. Such a control element can hardly be called practical; it is rather an image solution that brings the effect of novelty.
By the way, enthusiasts have already ported the original DOOM to the Touch Bar. There is no practical sense in this, playing the game on the touch panel is almost impossible.
But the mod, which allows you to display the HUD on the additional display (the panel where health and the number of cartridges are displayed), is a little more interesting. Why it is needed is still unclear, but at least it looks stylish.
Side note, as ridiculous (ly amazing) as Doom is running on the Touch Bar is … the HUD is equally great pic.twitter.com/RFwq7nJ7ae
– Adam Bell (@ b3ll) November 20, 2016
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The main task of any display is to display information. Ideally, it should always be displayed, without disconnecting and without going to sleep without an explicit user command. In real life, you have to make compromises, because the battery charge does not last forever, and the display is the main cost item in any modern smartphone or tablet. Not surprisingly, from time to time, manufacturers are tempted to add another one to the main screen, which, although it will be very tiny, will be able to work practically without switching off. And it will be possible to display the current time, the number of missed calls, the name of the letter that came, and so on.
Examples of such devices are smartphones LG V10 and LG V20, in which a thin strip of the secondary display is located directly above the main one.
It could be used for a lot of things: notifications, icons, labels, and so on. But although most journalists spoke very warmly about the LG V line, LG did not have any wow effect.
Now we are hearing more about the Always On function (aka Active Display and so on), which allows you to constantly display notifications on the screen without any additional complications.
It is not yet clear what the additional display will look like in the LG V30, but some changes with the additional screen will obviously occur there. At the end of last week, many resources wrote that, according to @Evleaks, there will be no additional display in the new product at all.
I will say this: adieu, ticker.
– Evan Blass (@evleaks) November 19, 2016
Later it turned out that the insider was simply misunderstood, the second display in the smartphone will remain, but will undergo major changes. What exactly is at stake is still unknown, but knowing LG, it could be anything. From minor cosmetic changes to complete rethinking of the concept.
Language is just so important. Found it interesting that many publications mistranslated this as “ditching the secondary display.” https://t.co/XIanpUGPz7
– Evan Blass (@evleaks) November 20, 2016
Meizu and Apple
Rumors about the possible resignation of Johnny Ive have been circulating for a long time, but they had nothing to do with the real situation in Apple. Rather, they simply expressed user dissatisfaction with some of the Apple company's design solutions.
But this week, several resources at once mentioned that Ive plans to change the type of activity and gradually move away from the design of mobile technology, and the recently published book Designed by Apple in California is a way to remind of his achievements and leave beautifully.
These are just rumors, it may well be that there is not a word of truth in them. But Apple it would only be good. Over the past couple of years, the company has already come up with more than enough adapters, it's high time to get away from this business and do something else.
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Several new images of the unannounced smartphone Meizu have appeared online. Perhaps we are talking about Meizu Pro 7, perhaps about some new smartphone.
A curved display and thin side bezels will become a distinctive feature of the smartphone. It is difficult to judge the reliability of the images, especially since they differ from each other.
In any case, they look much more real than the renders of the frameless smartphone published last week.
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