14 DAY TRIAL // Windows phones might not have a place in Microsoft’s vision, or at least this is what everything that the company does these days appears to suggest, but there are designers across the world who actually see plenty of potential in the Windows mobile ecosystem.
This is the case of a designer called Mr. Vero who previously created some very interesting Windows phone concepts, and today he’s doing it again with the HP Hunter prototype.
As you can see for yourselves in these photos, the HP Hunter is imagined with no side bezels, which brings Windows phones in line with other smartphones currently on the market, including the Samsung Galaxy S7 (we’d say with Note 7 too, but given the existing drama around Samsung’s phablet, nobody wants to come in line with the Note anymore).
Who needs LED notifications anyway?
Furthermore, the prototype features what seems to be a LED notification light, which could be quite a compelling addition to the Windows phone feature lineup. LED notifications have been around for many years on Android devices and BlackBerry models, but they never made it to Windows phones.
And truth be told, LED notifications aren’t even needed on Windows phones given the availability of Glance screen, which is a feature that’s a lot more advanced and more helpful for users.
At the same time, the concept also proposes an oddly-shaped home button that most likely integrates a fingerprint sensor for Windows Hello. The back of the phone is quite simple and clean and only holds the HP logo, the camera and the flash.
Concepts like these show that users in the Windows phone ecosystem still hope Microsoft or partners would bring new devices to the market at some point, despite all the bad news lately. Microsoft is expected to release its own Surface Phone sometime in the future, but the latest rumors seem to point to a launch in early 2018, significantly later than the original target date of October 2016.
