We’ve heard rumors of it since few weeks ago and they are right: HP is indeed launching a Windows 10 smartphone at Mobile World Congress 2016. As it turns out, the new HP Elite x3 is not just another flagship Windows 10 smartphone though.
Alongside the phone, HP has designed two optional accessories that are meant to give its users PC-like experience with the help of Windows 10 Mobile’s Continuum feature. One such accessory is called Mobile Extender which essentially a lapdock – a dock in laptop form factor.
Equipped with a 12.5-inch full HD display as well as keyboard, trackpad, and speakers, the Mobile Extender also comes with three USB Type-C ports, one Micro HDMI out port, and a stereo headphone jack. The Mobile Extender is also built with 4-cell battery which not only powers up all its screens and other components within the lapdock but also the Elite x3 itself.
So, the only thing that it is missing is the computational hardware which how the Elite x3 comes into the picture through Continuum. Other than the Mobile Extender, HP has also come out with the Desk Dock which acts as a more traditional desk-based Continuum dock for Elite x3. It is also built with two USB-A ports alongside DisplayPort, USB Type-C and Ethernet port.
Built with 5.96-inch WQHD (2560 x 1440) AMOLED display, the LTE-enabled Elite x3 runs on a 2.15GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 quad-core processor together with 4GB LPDDR4 RAM and 64GB internal storage. It also features a huge 4,150 mAh battery, and supports both Qi as well as PMA wireless charging technologies alongside Qualcomm’s QuickCharge 3.0.
Photography-wise, the Elite x3 comes with 16-megapixels f/2.0 rear camera and 8-megapixels front camera. It supports Windows Hello biometric security feature via iris recognition on the front and fingerprint reader on its back. There’s also a front facing speakers on the phone that are tuned by Bang & Olufsen as well as omni-directional microphones.
Not to forget, the Elite x3 is designed to pass the MIL-STD 810G and IP67 standards which means that it is dust and water resistant. Since it is designed primarily for business users, every Elite x3 will come with Salesforce1 app as standard.
Despite that, we are quite sure that some consumers might be interested with the Elite x3 especially Windows fans out there. No price at the moment though but we don’t expect it to be cheap once it is released to the market in the middle of this year.
