The HP Elite x3 is one of the most powerful Windows smartphones to date. It has a 6 inch, high-resolution display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage.
But what really makes this phone stand out is that it’s designed to work not only as a mobile phone, but also as a desktop or laptop computer.
The Elite x3 is up for pre-order from the Microsoft Store, and the phone should begin shipping later this month. It’s designed for business customers, but the Elite x3 will be available for anyone to purchase… although one of its most useful features is only really available for enterprise customers.
HP sells the Elite x3 for $799 and that price includes a desktop dock that allows you to connect the phone to a monitor, mouse, and keyboard to run some apps in desktop mode. Soon HP will also offer a $1300 bundle which includes the phone, a desktop dock, and a laptop dock.
After writing about the phone for months, I finally got a chance to check one out in person this week.
The Elite x3 has a 5.96 inch, 2560 x 1440 pixel AMOLED display. It’s a big phone. But I found it to be surprisingly light and relatively easy to hold in one hand (although reaching all the way across the display with a thumb is pretty much out of the question).
On the back of the phone there’s a fingerprint scanner, and on the front there’s a camera with support for Iris recognition. You can use either or both to login to the phone using the Windows Hello biometric security feature in Windows 10 Mobile.
Unlike a lot of high-end smartphones these days, the Elite x3 has a microSD card slot for expandable storage. And the phone is sold as an unlocked device that should work with any GSM wireless carrier.
Connect the phone to the Elite x3 desktop dock and you can run Windows 10 Mobile in full-screen mode on an external display. The phone’s start screen becomes a start menu. The navigation bar at the bottom becomes a taskbar. And many apps that run in single-column views on the phone can take advantage of the extra screen real estate to give you a multi-panel view.
This makes Outlook, Word, Excel, and other office apps feel more like their desktop counterparts. And you should be able to run many Universal Windows Platform apps from the Windows Store.
But while Microsoft’s Continuum for phone software makes it look like your phone is running the desktop version of Windows, it’s not. All apps run in full-screen mode. There’s no support for tiling windows or seeing multiple apps on the screen at once.
There is one way that multitasking is supported though: you can view different apps on your phone and on the big screen display. You could open a calendar on your phone while editing a document on the bigger display, for example. Or you could take a phone call while viewing a PowerPoint presentation.
Another limitation, though, is that software that hasn’t been ported to run on Windows 10 Mobile won’t work… and that includes millions of legacy Windows programs.
HP does offer an enterprise solution for this: it’s called HP Workspace. Basically, it allows you to remotely connect to a server running the software you need. Businesses with legacy software that their employees may need to access in the field can license the technology from HP and then users can basically interact with desktop software using their phones.
HP says it may be cheaper for some businesses than spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in development time to convert some older apps into something that can run natively on a phone… but it still allows them to give employees a single device that can be used as a phone, a desktop, and a laptop on the go.
As for the laptop functionality, that comes from an HP Elite x3 Lap Dock which will be available soon. It looks like a laptop, but the Lap Dock doesn’t do anything until it’s connected the Elite x3, either via a USB-C cable or wirelessly.
When the Lap Dock is connected, it offers all the features you’d get by plugging in a monitor, but in a mobile package. The Lap Dock also has a few bonus features, including a 46.5 Whr battery that can charge the phone whether you’re using it or not, and a micro HDMI port for connecting an external display.
The Lap Dock has a 12.5 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel display, a headset jack, three USB Type-C ports, and a backlit, spill-resistant keyboard and touchpad.
While HP plans to sell the Lap Dock in a bundle with the phone for $1300, the company says the laptop station will also be available separately for customers that buy the phone now and want to add it later. The pricing for the accessory hasn’t been announced yet, but I’m told it will be cheaper if you buy the bundle… which suggests that the Lap Dock will cost at least $500. 
That makes it quite a bit more expensive than an Androimum Superbook or NexDock laptop dock. But HP’s offering seems a bit more polished than those crowdfunding products, and HP is positioning the Elite x3 as a device that companies can supply to remote workers such as traveling sales people. Viewed in that light, equipping employees with an Elite x3 + Lap Dock could be cheaper than supplying each worker with a separate phone and laptop.
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I think MS missed out on the real thing. with Windows 10 being as light on resources as it is, they could probably have squeezed in 6gb of ram, 128eMMC and a cherry trail z8700 in that space and make it run 64bit windows in tablet mode while standalone and only continuum apps and, when docked, run x64 and x86 apps. That would probably suit a whole lot of people and companies and serve as a real 2 in 1.
That Kangaroo modular notebook that Brad featured here made me think: Hey, what if that module itself was a smartphone? It looks like the size of a smartphone AND it runs Windows 10.
It seems like that the only missing component from Windows 10 desktop is phone software and hardware driver support for mobile carriers. In fact, I predict that the next version of Windows (after Windows 10) could have this. This would enable a future version of the Surface Pro to use mobile data and for the user to make voice calls through the mobile carrier.
true but that’s significantly under spec’ed. I have a 1st gen compute stick which is always connected to my TV and after just the windows installation, VLC and an Antivirus, you’re down to 12 GB free space because Windows reserves about 7 gb for the installation backup. You can’t even run the upgrade tool since that requires 16 gb free space. A minimum of 4gb is required to do any real work and 8 gb to relaxed keeping multiple applications open at once.
why. why can’t we just use a laptop/desktop/surface pro and a phone separate. This is a classic solution looking for a problem. And making more problems than you had before and draining your wallet. This is the era of the cloud – one of MS’s key businesses. They can sell a phone license, a full windows licence and an azure based service subscription to sync your settings and backup your files.
It makes sense to have the two in one device. You’ll still need the cloud to back up your data since there is always the chance of hardware failure and if you have 1 device doing both, the sync bandwidth will be reduced. Also, it will make a lot more users ditch their iPhones and Android given windows support for their OS is for a much longer period than either of their competitors AND you’ll have your PC with you all the time. A standardized docking solution (one using 1 single USB type c for charging, USB hub and video/audio) where you have a keyboard and mouse left connected to the dock when you leave from home only to reconnect to your office dock and continue what you were doing.
I’d say that a phone + laptop is 2 points of failure with two places to keep in sync, with 2 devices that can also be lost/stolen, and if you have multiple keyboards, monitors and mice your all-in cost is lower.
This is like what we experienced during the Rise of the Smartphone, where before Blackberry we used to carry separate phone/organizer/gps/camera/flashlight/laptop in our kit and now we dont.
e.g. a real laptop and a phone and MyPhoneexplorer
https://www.fosshub.com/MyPhon…
As a consumer, I’d be all over this if more software vendors jumped on the Universal Windows Platform or Intel didn’t give up on the smartphone space so MS could have integrated a real desktop at some point. My work uses Citrix for running desktop Windows remotely. It’s clunky and sometimes local files get corrupted if I get disconnected while a save is in progress (my local disk is mounted on the remote Windows machine).
I hope MS and OEMs continue with this even if short term sales aren’t as high and full mobile/desktop convergence becomes a reality.
Too bad Intel decided to leave the smartphone market. It seemed that
they were well on their way into providing competitive high performing yet low power
x86 SoCs for smartphones in the coming years (the current ones weren’t quite there yet). Too bad that’s too long
for a commercial company.
I was hoping to eventually see MS’ Windows 10 platform
to truly become universal. It’s possible with UWP but not many software
vendors are enthused by the whole thing. I’d like 1 device to act as my
PC and phone where the cloud is only used for backup purposes.
Intel’s latest and greatest the Atom X7 (Z8700) was about on-par with ARM processors such as the QSD 805 and the QSD 650.
That’s plenty of performance for small packages. But its still far off from the likes of a Intel Core i5-U processor, which many agree is what meets proper daily computing needs.
So they weren’t exactly quite there, and to be honest, neither is ARM (but they’re close).
I think the bigger issue is the lack of polish and support from MS’s end.
some things shouldn’t be converged. For example a mack truck and family sedan.
The trend of “crossovers” begs to differ.
I thought this would go further, but Intel discontinued their Atom x7 for phones.
Windows phone cannot run win32 applications, even on Intel.
yes I know.. but I was thinking this would be the next course of evolution should the platform continue to develop
Once I can run my desktop apps on a Windows phone, goodbye Android.
I want to run my trading platform on a single device using the mobile app on the go and the full desktop version when connected to k/m/v… prefer at least 6gb ram for that tho… and a badass processor….
I think .. Google Pixel has this features to
This has the same problem Motorola’s Lapdocks did–working only with the manufacturer’s designated devices–although the design may allow it to work with future HP phones.
So, you could spend $1300 on all this … or spend about $200 to buy a Superbook with backlit keys and 1080p screen, which will work with the Android phone or Android tablet or Ipad you ALREADY have, as well as the next phone or tablet you buy in the future … or with the Android, Windows or Linux stick PC or mini-PC you ALREADY have, and the ones that will replace it in the future … or go really cheap and buy the Superbook for $109 with 768p screen and no backlit keys.
(PS–this is not a hard decision)
For desktop docking, isn’t that a feature any Windows 10 phone can do (both wired and wireless)? What’s stopping other Windows 10 phones from connecting to the laptop dock? Isn’t HP just using a built-in feature of Windows 10 Mobile?
Frankly its a product that at best will be sold essentially by tricking impulse buyers. It should be an “as seen on tv” product. “hey look, desktop windows computing – coming out of this phone. Buy me!” We can already do for years what this does. Either by casting or other wired options. What it does not do is what windows is all about – run win32 desktop applications! Even if it could, it would run them poorly. A mobile phone class processor and slow memory. windows phone cannot run such applications, even if it were an intel CPU.
What kind of monitor can this drive and at what resolution? Is a 34″ ultrawide in play? Can you do 2 separate browser windows side by side? Does it support displaylink?