When it first unveiled Windows 10 last year,
Microsoft
briefly talked about a new feature called
Continuum, but back then it was in the context
of switching UIs on convertible devices based
on whether you have the keyboard connected
or not. And Continuum can still do that, but
today at its Build conference, the software
giant has announced a more interesting use
case, with Continuum for phones.
>
This kicks in when you connect a smartphone
running
Windows 10 to a monitor. The UIs you'll see on
the
monitor won't just be a 1:1 representation of
the
handset's screen. Instead, the phone is
basically turned into a makeshift PC, which will
even work with a mouse and keyboard for
interaction.
Initially, you see your phone's Start screen on
the left side of the monitor, but if you open a
universal app that will take over the whole
width of the monitor, as you can see from the
screen grab above. So you'll have no wasted
space, and you'll be able to do some work in a
much easier way than if you were to simply
glance at a representation of your phone's
screen.
Furthermore, all the usual PC keyboard
commands will work in this mode, so you can
use Ctrl+C for copying, Ctrl+V for pasting, and
so on. Microsoft says it wants to let
smartphone scale up to a full PC-like
experience.
Unfortunately it looks like existing Windows
Phones,
once updated to Windows 10, won't be able to
take
advantage of this feature. That's because it
requires new hardware in order to drive the
dual-screen experience.
You may remember that Ubuntu thought about
something similar a few years ago, but the
Ubuntu for Android project flopped eventually –
perhaps because it was trying to do more (run
'full' Ubuntu when the phone was docked), but
also because it wanted to pair two different
operating systems from two different
companies on the same device. In Microsoft's
case, it's all Windows, so Continuum has no
reason not to be successful.