An Android phone that transforms into a Windows laptop?

Many companies have been working hard to make smartphones that double as desktops, but Samsung is working feverishly to turn them into laptops!

So, Samsung has been thinking up new ways to transform smartphones into laptops. They managed to go forward with their patent application that contains the schematics of the device, Samsung has described it as a mobile device that runs Android and is able to switch over to Windows when inserted into a dock.

When you separate these two ideas, it’s obvious that they aren’t new. Dual-OS devices and docking smartphones have been tried a number of times over the years, but they haven’t been put together in a really straightforward way. Remember that it’s only a patent application, so there’s no way to know if Samsung will actually make it.

Samsung has actually gone into quite a bit of detail on how the device would work. The core would be a smartphone or a tablet, which would hold everything needed to run both Android and Windows. In the patent, the dock is shown to have a keyboard, a large display and possibly a track pad.

This is where it gets interesting… the dock may not need a track pad, because the smartphones touchscreen could just be used instead, however an existing track pad may benefit users as the handheld can be utilized as a secondary display.

Samsung went on to say that it could display Android at the same time that the dock displays Windows, or that it could be an extension of the Windows desktop.

The patent application also noted that other operating systems could be used in place of Windows and Android, but those are the two that it focuses on! It’s not really surprising, seeing as those are the two most popular mobile and desktop operating systems, and Samsung has even played around with transitioning between the two of them.

Earlier in June 2013, Samsung introduced Ativ Q, a fully functioning Windows laptop and Android tablet in a 13.3inch single package with dual-booting and SideSync software allowing users to share data within both operating systems.

The thing is, making both form factors actually good to use is kind of difficult, especially when all of their power is coming from a mobile device. Still, the idea that a single device could actually serve as the core of all our computing isn’t unreasonable, and its clearly something that Samsung is seriously thinking about.

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Written By: Christine Romans
CopyWriter at The Computer Guyz Cape Town