Continuum for phones | Take a whole PC from your phone with Windows 10

Surely this situation seems familiar to you: you are going to explain a presentation to your class, so you take your laptop, connect it to the display or projector and let the show start. What if from now on this was not necessary? What if your mobile phone acted as a computer? This is precisely another of the new advantages of Windows 10 and its universal apps. Microsoft has given it the name of Continuum for phones.

Continuum for phones

Continuum for phones

The system is similar to the Continuum we know between desktop and touch screens, just that applied to phones. Connect your phone to the external monitor (via an HDMI input) and from there, you can access the desktop version of the apps you want and have installed on your phone. For example, you can run and edit PowerPoint slides of your presentation. In the Microsoft Build conference, they showed in a demo version how you could copy content from your phone and paste it in the application that was running on the external display. In short: it is as if the phone worked as a computer.

You can also connect a keyboard and mouse via Bluetooth and, from there, use the applications that are installed on your phone to your taste from the external display. As universal apps, they will automatically take the size of the screen itself and it will basically be like if you were running them from the computer (we understand that, of course, with some limitations, but we will have to wait to see it in action).

Check your mail

Check your mail

You will take your computer in your pocket… literally! But, for sure, it will only be compatible with some phones.

On your TV screen

On your TV screen

Although they have not given many details about the technical requirements to take advantage of this functionality, they do have made clear that not all phones with Windows Phone will be compatible with Continuum for phones. In fact, it is something that is reserved for new terminals that will support dual-screen, since it will be necessary to show something on the mobile screen and other different thing in the external display. About the final date? They have not specified too much, although they have said that we have to wait for the first phones that are released after Windows 10 is on the market.