Real desktop apps will soon run on Windows 10 smartphones

Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, and more on your phone.

Previously, Windows 10 handsets have been able to evolve into an almost complete PC-like solution in Continuum. It lets the users transform the phone in a productivity suite, by attaching it to a monitor and keyboard. But despite all that peripheral-integration, the support for ‘real’ desktop apps wasn’t there yet.

That’s about to change with the recent announcement from Microsoft in an event in Shenzen, China. Together with Qualcomm, they’ve partnered to bring desktop apps support to ARM processors.

No, these are not desktop app ports, but rather the same type as the ones you’d find on a PC. Full version of Microsoft Office, Steam, Photoshop, and all are coming. But what’s even better is that the developers don’t need to do anything to make this happen. Microsoft and Qualcomm did all the work and made an emulation process, simulating real desktop apps on a smartphone with a Snapdragon 820 chipset and 4GB of RAM. Yes, that’s a similar setup to recent Windows 10 phones like the HP Elite X3.

But this development doesn’t mean that Microsoft is giving up on the Universal Windows Platform. In fact, they’re still pushing for it because apps in that platform are generally more touch-friendly and power-efficient than legacy x86 PC software.

Surface Phone

Things are looking bright for the Windows 10 platform and it seems like the ‘dream’ of a singular device for personal and work use is becoming closer to reality. Microsoft calls the ARM-powered devices as ‘cellular PCs’, saying that they may start launching as early as 2017.

Remember the Surface smartphone with laptop-class processor last month? It might turn out to be true, after all – but the other way around.

Source: TheNextWeb

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