14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has more or less abandoned the idea of a fully-featured Windows phone, and after the demise of Windows 10 Mobile, the future for the company’s mobile strategy appears to be based entirely on Android.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that Windows can’t survive in the mobile business, and living proof in this regard comes from the skilled developer community that continues investing in projects pushing Microsoft’s deeper and deeper into the unexplored smartphone business.
More recently, Windows 10 has stepped into the Android phone world, as some developers managed to install the ARM version on devices that originally launched with Google’s mobile operating system.
A report from WL points to two such projects that brought Windows 10 ARM on OnePlus 6 and Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S, as well as on Samsung’s very own Galaxy S8 – as a matter of fact, Samsung Galaxy S8 won’t get Android 10, so experimenting with Windows 10 would be an interesting thing to do for tech-savvy owners who plan to give up on this device anyway.
Windows 10 ARM on Android
Getting Windows 10 ARM to run on these devices is mostly possible because of the way the operating system was designed in the first place.
Microsoft launched this Windows 10 version for ARM-powered PCs running on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors optimized for computers. And because these smartphones also use Qualcomm chips, getting Windows 10 ARM to run on them isn’t necessarily easy, but is something that can be done with the right drivers and optimization work.
As I said several times before, there’s no real benefit of this project, other than simply experimenting with Windows 10 on a mobile device. Microsoft did not design Windows 10 ARM for smartphones, so the interface isn’t at all optimized for such screens.
If Windows does have a future in mobile, the only version that makes more sense for this form factor is Windows 10X.