The new Intel project was demoed at MWC 2016

Feb 26, 2016 20:59 GMT  ·  By

At the Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona, Intel demoed an Android phone that turns into a desktop once it’s connected via HDMI to a monitor.

It turns out that not only Canonical and Microsoft are interested in this concept, now even Intel is working on a similar project. It’s not difficult to understand why that’s the case. Mobile devices have become really powerful, so developers are trying to figure out what they can do with all that extra juice.

Canonical was working on something similar many years ago, and the project was named Ubuntu for Android. Now, the idea of transforming a mobile device into a PC seems to be gaining ground, and multiple companies are pursuing this idea, although they're going about it in different ways.

Windows Continuum projects a sort of a start screen into a full window PC experience, but it’s just for show, and only a couple of apps are working now. Canonical wants to have a single operating system that can work on mobile devices and PCs. And there are at least a couple of other projects that have similar targets.

Phone needs Intel processor

The Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona was a really big event, and some things fell through the crack. Intel showing how to transform a phone with Android into a desktop running Debian was one of them.

From the looks of it, the project is functional right now, although it does have some issues. The resolution is not properly scaled, and it’s not the best experience. The best feature seems to be the fact that the Android seems to run in sidestage, according to a report on valuewalk.com and winfuture.de.

There is a caveat, of course. The phone that was present at Barcelona is a prototype built by Foxconn that uses the Intel Atom X3 platform. The company says that it has 2GB RAM and 16GB of storage, but the hardware won’t allow it to have more than 720p. Also, the estimated price should be around $100 (€91).

Also, the fact that it seems to need an Intel processor is not a really good sign, but since it’s done by Intel, that shouldn’t be a problem.