As portable as full-blooded PC experience can be?
We got to try Windows streaming for Thinkphone mobiles here at IFA in Berlin. The experience is reasonably good, but it is still not completely smooth.
KameraFinn Jarle Kvalheim / Tek.no
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Berlin/Tech.no: Are you everywhere all the time, but at the same time you have a great need to get work done on a screen? Creating an extremely compact and portable Windows experience, or something very similar, has been attempted for quite a few years now.
Now Motorola may have succeeded in creating something that can actually be used.
Their ThinkPhone is the first in a collaboration with Microsoft that can stream Windows directly from the cloud. You can think of it as a kind of “thin client” in your pocket. It doesn’t do much itself, but becomes a gateway into a full-fledged PC in the cloud.
This is the most portable way to use Windows from your mobile that Motorola envisions. With portable screen and very compact keyboard from Lenovo.
KameraFinn Jarle Kvalheim / Tek.no
Plug in your mobile phone and you’re good to go
All you need apart from the mobile phone is a screen and a cable. And preferably a mouse and keyboard. But this kind of thing has a tendency to be around from before.
For those of you who want to use the mobile’s capabilities to “run” full Windows on tour, there is also an alternative that we saw here in Berlin. In a test setup, Motorola had connected a typical touch-equipped portable screen and a lightweight keyboard with the mobile phone.
All this can also be run via the mobile network. Motorola promised that you don’t need a stick and full 5G to be able to use it, but at the same time admitted that intermittent and really poor network quality can sour the experience. On airplane WiFi, for example, it is unlikely that this will work.
Whenever you connect your Thinkphone to an external display, it can resume Windows activity where you last left it.
KameraFinn Jarle Kvalheim / Tek.no
Own service
The solution is thus operated via Windows 365, where you can subscribe to different degrees of performance in what Microsoft calls a “cloud PC”. The cheapest solution is NOK 327 plus VAT, and is primarily a business service. Prices increase as you build performance, and you can choose up to 8 “virtual processors” to power the experience.
The Windows you then access is in the cloud and is not initially connected to or synchronized with your other machines. But you can of course use it from a ThinkPhone and any other computer you have. That way, you have a PC that is always where you left it, no matter where you open it from.
If you have a cable and a monitor, the Motorola ThinkPhone will open the Windows screen directly on the screen you are connected to. You can also use your mobile as a touchpad for the Windows experience.
Also showed the world’s first water-cooled laptop
The lid of the Legion 9i is made in a carbon fiber design that has a slightly different pattern for each and every machine that is made. With extreme details and ditto offal, this will be a particularly expensive experience.
KameraFinn Jarle Kvalheim / Tek.no
The ThinkPhone is not new in itself, and we have long since tested the phone. But the fact that you can stream Windows to a mobile is new. Lenovo and Motorola also showed off several other novelties here in Berlin.
Among them was the world’s supposedly first laptop with actual water cooling. Here we are talking about pumps and the whole sulamite that you know from stationary gaming rigs. The beast can be upgraded with a Core i9 processor and RTX 4090 graphics. By the way, it’s called Legion 9i.
The Legion 9i lights up its surroundings in much the same way that an unidentified flying object does when it is about to abduct a cow.
KameraFinn Jarle Kvalheim / Tek.no
The top of the machine is partially transparent with lots of perforations above and below, and through all the small holes we can see the fans that keep the machine cool during use.
Here, of course, there is also plenty of RGB lighting. Because it’s not possible to game without it looking like you’re being carried away alien.
Among the novelties in Lenovo’s selection this year were these glasses that function as an additional screen. They have a motion sensor so you can turn to look at different parts of the content, but they are more of an extra screen than VR glasses in the usual sense.
KameraFinn Jarle Kvalheim / Tek.no
Published September 3, 2023, 4:00 p.m
2023-09-03 14:00:00
#Windows #mobile #Tek.no
