One of the coolest new features in Windows 10 Mobile is Continuum for phone, which lets you connect some phones to an external display, keyboard, and mouse and use your mobile device like a desktop PC. But Continuum for phone is pretty limited: it only works on a handful of phones (including the Lumia 950, Lumia 950 XL, and Acer Jade Primo), and only works with Universal Windows apps that run in full screen mode.
But now there’s a way to use Win32-style apps, complete with multi-window multitasking. Well, sort of.
Microsoft has released a new preview of its Remote Desktop app for Windows phones. Version 844 of Remote Desktop Preview supports Windows 10 Mobile and works with Continuum for phone.
That means you can remotely login to your home, work, or other PC and control that computer from your phone. That means apps will actually be running on a full-fledged PC, while you’re simply connecting to it and controlling it over the internet. But the end result is that you can hook up your phone to an external monitor and use full-fledged desktop apps including Office, Photoshop, or just about anything else, without relying on the mobile/universal versions of those apps.
You may not need to leave your home computer running to do this: enterprise users can enable support for connections to “Remote Resources,” allowing you to access desktops or specific apps from your phone.
As ZDNet notes eventually the Remote Desktop app will also support Azure RemoteApp, which lets users run apps from a cloud server. But that feature isn’t ready just yet (and probably won’t be something most casual users can take advantage of anyway).
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So in other words it’ll be just like using one of the many RDP clients on your Android phone or tablet today.
Although finding a good app let alone an rdp one on android without ads is an absolute task. And by no means I am a windows fan
I’ve happy enough using Parallels 2X RDP myself. But there are plenty of alternatives.
I don’t get how the Windows Phone device is necessary when you could simply run Remote Desktop client on the PC you’re already using.
Sure, but this HAS to be supported for Continuum to be relevant. In theory, you could have USB-C/Thunderbolt based docks that would be truly vendor independent and allow for open worspace scenarios where people could move around, regardless whether they were using Windows, Windows Mobile, OSX, Android and perhaps even iOS one day (or maybe not). People would just plug in their device and be productive with a larger screen and mouse/keyboard, and with a RD server to connect to, they could run WIN32 applications on all of those devices. It could be pretty useful in educational institutions. I work at one, and we don’t have PC’s in all meeting rooms, offices, group rooms. It could save us a bunch of money and hassle if we didn’t have to provide one or maintain/renew those that we do have. That’s if and when everybody supports USB-C… it’s definitely a nice-to-have, not… Read more »
The point is that you don’t need a PC. You just need a phone + monitor… although to be fair, odds are that if you’re in a place where you can plug into a monitor, mouse, and keyboard, there’s probably already a PC there.
It can’t be that uncommon for offices to have rooms with TV screens – usually used for people to plug a laptop in – but without actually a computer there, and just having to add a keyboard in the room is a lot easier than adding and maintaining a computer.
True, there are other options like just continuing to use a laptop, or things like a Raspberry Pi, but this is an interesting additional way of doing it.
Yes, that was my point.
hotel room I guess? foldable keyboard, use phone as trackpad or use somthing like the foldable arc mouse and use hotel TV screen maybe with Miracast?
To be fair, we can already do this with Android phones.
An Android device can be set up to use a keyboard, mouse and external monitor?
You can connect keyboard and mouse via bluetooth or usb, and almost all android phones support video out via hdmi/mhl.
AFAIK Continuum does not simple mirror the phone screen but uses a 2nd screen in landscape mode with start menu etc. Phone screen can still be used for apps (like calling, sms, skype etc) or as a kind of trackpad.
And for normal apps (not Remote desktop) I guess hardly any Android app is optimized for keyboard or mouse but almost all UWP apps are (there are a few touch only ones.)
and many support chromecast and miracast natively to project their screens to monitors.(like my 99 $ android tablet) and connects to peripherals via usb-otg. why not android phones too? check it. and btw as a pc on the go with similar specs i carry a 60$ win tablet.(currently with about 150 GB data storage) does not add a lot more to the weight in toto … but gives me the full desktop and legacy software capabilities. and the phone for talking needs was dirt cheap.