Microsoft hints at x86 Phone. Surface Phone Confirmed?

[zMeul]

what's more plausible?

1. MS hasn't cleaned the release files
2. MS will release a x86 phone 

[goodtofufriday]

2 minutes ago, Daring said:

x86 programs on an 8" screen are cumbersome and clunky, I'd imagine it'd be even worse on a 5" screen.

and @Trixanity

 

Personally Ive not had issues. The mouse control moves the cursor in RDP independent of your finger and works great. Where as in teamviewer wherever you tap is the mouse which I agree is cumbersome. 

 

I have tried using a compute stick but it was just better to carry around a surface. There are some locations like residential buildings where an onsite computer just is not feasible. This is especially true during installation of network systems into older buildings. 

Most networking tools are fine for a small screen. Not planning on using photoshop here.

 

I would just prefer to have my phone which i carry 24/7 to be my support device. I'm on call 24/7 as I am an Admin. Not going to have my surface 24/7

[Doobeedoo]

x86 smartphone would be sweet. Would really like to see it and possible Surface Phone though. I wonder would AMD tackle on mobile with their APU in future.

[Nowak]

16 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

x86 smartphone would be sweet.

It already exists.

[dalekphalm]

3 minutes ago, Daring said:

It already exists.

I think he means a Windows based x86 smartphone.

 

Because honestly, an Android x86 smartphone doesn't make a lot of sense - at least, not unless there is a clear performance advantage for the x86 SoC - which there isn't.

 

Only reason we care about x86 is the potential for Win32 application compatibility.

[Nowak]

1 minute ago, dalekphalm said:

I think he means a Windows based x86 smartphone.

 

Because honestly, an Android x86 smartphone doesn't make a lot of sense - at least, not unless there is a clear performance advantage for the x86 SoC - which there isn't.

 

Only reason we care about x86 is the potential for Win32 application compatibility.

Don't get your hopes up, considering how Intel doesn't make x86 SoCs for phones anymore.

[dalekphalm]

2 minutes ago, Daring said:

Don't get your hopes up, considering how Intel doesn't make x86 SoCs for phones anymore.

That isn't news.

 

Though I wouldn't be surprised if Intel was still doing some limited R&D on it anyway, just not publicly. Not actively developing a SKU they can sell, but rather just progressing the research and seeing where it goes.

[Doobeedoo]

9 minutes ago, Daring said:

It already exists.

I know, I mean something new.

[SansVarnic]

Other than the unnecessarily click bait and rumor based information, lets stop with these sort of posts @AluminiumTech the WP/WM10 doesn't need more unnecessary speculation spread about the Surface phone. That said if or when Microsoft announces the device I will be all in for the hype but until then lets be honest with ourselves, If it happens, it happens and if doesn't ... well I wont die or lose sleep over it.

 

Yes an x86 based windows phone would great to have as mentioned by @goodtofufriday and there is whole host of situations that this would be great for and not just IT work. I for one would buy it as it would solve many a situational problem I personally have that neither a laptop or tablet would or does solve. Having used Continuum myself extensively it has relieved some of those same issues but is limited by the ARM processor it runs on. @Daring a lot of people have shown a great deal of interest in the Continuum/ Full desktop experience as shown in the previewers forum, I for one am one of them.

 

Obviously an x86 Windows Mobile Phone will not solve the pretentious "app gap"  but that is not the point and has zero relation to this discussion.   Any x86 based phone running Windows will have access to full programs and apps will be mostly unnecessary when running in Continuum/Full Desktop mode. I am sure that if such a device is developed and done proper the phone will have a phone mode and a desktop mode as by example of the Lumia 950XL. 

 

 

[Nowak]

1 hour ago, SansVarnic said:

@Daring a lot of people have shown a great deal of interest in the Continuum/ Full desktop experience as shown in the previewers forum, I for one am one of them.

Take a look at Samsung's DeX, it has everything that Continuum doesn't: windowed apps, every app works with it and... y'know, apps to begin with 

[Zodiark1593]

7 hours ago, Trixanity said:

I have tried Teamviewer on a touch screen actually. It wasn't a good experience. Sure, I'd use it in a pinch but on a daily or weekly basis? I'd rather chop my own arm off. 

 

x86 programs on a 5" touch screen are cumbersome. These programs are made for large displays with keyboard and mouse. They don't scale. It's times like these where you just wanna pull out a proper device. This is kinda like when people want apps, keyboards and all kinds of things on a smartwatch. At a certain point moving functionality over to a smaller form factor becomes so limiting and painful that it's easier to just go get the device it's suited for.

 

And what x86 apps aren't I aware of? There are thousands if not millions of x86 programs so it's pretty unlikely that I'll guess which applications you're referring to.

 

Also, you could still set up a local machine and plug in a Windows-To-Go thumb drive and have access to the same natively.

You could also use a Compute Stick. There are tons of ways to do this besides engineering an x86 compatible phone. So there are already solutions to your problem. What you're trying to create is a Swiss army knife but better dedicated tools already exist.

A device that allows you to write, compile, and arbitrarily execute literally anything you desire is a very powerful tool, especially since such a phone would (obviously) conform to modern networking standards. In the hands of the hacker, this would probably be quite a fearsome, and easily concealed weapon. 

[SansVarnic]

3 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

A device that allows you to write, compile, and arbitrarily execute literally anything you desire is a very powerful tool, especially since such a phone would (obviously) conform to modern networking standards. In the hands of the hacker, this would probably be quite a fearsome, and easily concealed weapon. 

Lets stay positive but yeah you have a point.  

[Zodiark1593]

11 minutes ago, SansVarnic said:

Lets stay positive but yeah you have a point.  

Of course I'm staying positive. I'd buy such a device myself. 

 

 

[Nowak]

Y'know, even if the Surface Phone ends up existing... can they get anyone to care? Because they could release the coolest, most innovative phone ever, but people will keep buying Samsungs and iPhones instead. Just like what happened with every other cool Windows phone ever; hell, my Lumia Icon was dropped by Verizon after only 8 months on sale because nobody was buying it, despite the huge amount of promotion surrounding it.

 

Plus there's the Galaxy S8, which Microsoft is selling their own version of, and helped Samsung with DeX. The Surface Phone might be dead before it even exists, which is honestly impressive. Unless the Galaxy S8 is secretly the Surface Phone.

[nephilim2]

It's not entirely out of the question. http://www.anandtech.com/show/11196/mwc-2017-spreadtrum-launches-8core-intel-airmontbased-soc-with-cat-7-lte-for-smartphones

 

Intel seems like it might just be licensing out cores to whoever wants to try their hand.

[vanished]

9 hours ago, Daring said:

Y'know, even if the Surface Phone ends up existing... can they get anyone to care? Because they could release the coolest, most innovative phone ever, but people will keep buying Samsungs and iPhones instead. Just like what happened with every other cool Windows phone ever; hell, my Lumia Icon was dropped by Verizon after only 8 months on sale because nobody was buying it, despite the huge amount of promotion surrounding it.

 

Plus there's the Galaxy S8, which Microsoft is selling their own version of, and helped Samsung with DeX. The Surface Phone might be dead before it even exists, which is honestly impressive. Unless the Galaxy S8 is secretly the Surface Phone.

Adoption will be an issue. Because of the lack of apps, even if it's great hardware, in my opinion they are restricted to pricing it as a budget device, so I see this going one of two ways:

• They sell them all at cost or even below cost to get them out into the market, hoping to make it up some other way, or just considering it an investment in the long term adoption of the platform (very unlikely imo)
• They price them appropriately for the hardware, forgetting that most people will simply turn to Android at that price and it will be a colossal failure (probably this sadly)

And I think some of the essential things they'll want to add to make people care are a digitized touchscreen like the Surface "laptops" have, Continuum (obviously) but an improved version that can run all apps, not just UWP ones, the addition of a JIT compiler to the Windows Phone OS so that emulators have a chance of actually running properly, (oh, and the return of them to Windows store ) and finally, if it's actually powerful enough to be useful, it would not be unreasonable to actually include an android emulator.  That way, I get the ability to run an android app once in a blue moon when I need to, but don't have to deal with it the rest of the time.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

23 hours ago, Trixanity said:

x86 for mobile is dead. Intel has killed everything on their mobile roadmap (mobile as in phones) and AMD doesn't have anything in the works for mobile either.

I wonder how much power a Zen CCX running at 1.0-2.0 GHz would take.

[Trixanity]

1 minute ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

I wonder how much power a Zen CCX running at 1.0-2.0 GHz would take.

We'll get a better idea of that in 2H when Zen APUs for notebooks start shipping. I'm sure it's possible to scale the chip down to something like a Core M with reasonable performance; scaling further than that (eg for phones) I'm not sure. It's hard to tell with the current product stack; it'll become a lot clearer with those APUs out.

The problem is costs and there is just no real business to be had in the segment.

 

Remember that current Ryzen processors are all the same chip so it isn't the most frugal design imaginable especially considering the intact L3 cache for example. If and when AMD gets more chip designs out, they'll get a lot more flexibility. I have no idea how many Intel has. They have so many SKUs but I wonder about the amount of chips they've actually designed. Ryzen is a testimony to how much you can get out of a single chip even though it's not exactly the cheapest chip to produce.

 

But to get back to the Zen CCX: they would have to rework some things to really squeeze it in there as the Zeppelin die isn't exactly made with absolute power efficiency in mind (and I'm sure they're already working on getting maximum performance and power efficiency for the upcoming APUs). It would be a waste of time for them to attempt a phone design unless someone like Microsoft paid for it and by paid for it I mean not only paying for the production but also the development as the market doesn't want x86 chips meaning they would have spent a lot of money on a product that no one is buying. There is also the issue of the architecture itself: it's scalable in nature but it was never designed for such a form factor like current SoCs are. The cores are bigger and the caches are bigger; the size of say a Qualcomm SD835 is tiny in comparison and there is a lot of IP inside that there isn't on the Zeppelin die (like the integrated modem for example) which also takes space. That's another thing that makes current Zen products unsuitable: they need to integrate a lot of stuff that mobile needs that a PC does not.

 

This post got a lot longer and more sidetracked than anticipated...

[Nowak]

1 hour ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Because of the lack of apps

Apps isn't Windows Phone's biggest problem. It's Microsoft itself. Their strategy is as clear as mud, and now they're evidently more committed to Android and iOS than they are Windows 10 Mobile (see: Samsung Galaxy S8 Microsoft Edition).

[vanished]

16 minutes ago, Daring said:

Apps isn't Windows Phone's biggest problem. It's Microsoft itself. Their strategy is as clear as mud, and now they're evidently more committed to Android and iOS than they are Windows 10 Mobile (see: Samsung Galaxy S8 Microsoft Edition).

Their path does seem to be a bit unclear but I feel strongly that their #1 barrier to entry is the smaller library of apps compared to android and ios.  #2 I would guess would be people who don't like Windows or Microsoft for some other reason (ie, any one or more of the issues people have with Windows 10).

[Nowak]

2 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Their path does seem to be a bit unclear but I feel strongly that their #1 barrier to entry is the smaller library of apps compared to android and ios.  #2 I would guess would be people who don't like Windows or Microsoft for some other reason (ie, any one or more of the issues people have with Windows 10).

Rebooting your operating system 3 times and having no strategy other than "Make our services better on the competition" doesn't exactly instill a lot of consumer confidence in your platform.

[vanished]

1 minute ago, Daring said:

Rebooting your operating system 3 times and having no strategy other than "Make our services better on the competition" doesn't exactly instill a lot of consumer confidence.

When I first got my phone it did freeze or reboot a few times in the first couple days but that was many months ago and it's been perfectly stable since then

[Nowak]

Just now, Ryan_Vickers said:

When I first got my phone it did freeze or reboot a few times in the first couple days but that was many months ago and it's been perfectly stable since then

That's not what I meant 

 

Windows Phone 7 was a reboot of Windows Mobile

Windows Phone 8.x was a reboot of Windows Phone 7

Windows 10 Mobile was a reboot of Windows Phone 8.x

 

That just ends up confusing people and makes them wonder when the latest reboot will be abandoned in favor of the next reboot.

[TetraSky]

Windows 10 on Desktop(x86) used to have a stupid Phone App which made no sense and was entirely useless for a large majority of Windows users. (Doesn't seems to show up anymore as of the Creator Update though)

So that they would spin that off to make an actual x86 windows phone device, is of no surprise to me. It would certainly be better than an ARM device that can't do much. Battery life is a concern though.

[patrick3027]

Every Windows fan since june 2012:

Quote

The Surface phone is coming soon

https://trends.google.be/trends/explore?q=surface phone