Wow. Parts of that demo really seem to be inspired from Android. The hamburger menu, the black navigation bar at the bottom, the slide out menus etc.
But the potential really is in the Phone->PC continuum. If I can take a beefy x86 phone (Intel seems to be inching closer to that reality) running windows and use it like phone most time and then dock it onto a big screen with keyboard and mouse - that really is a killer feature. It could change things in Microsoft's favor if they manage to get the integration and hardware parts right.
(I should say that the concept is not new - Motorola tried that with the Atrix - but it was underpowered hardware, flakey software and little integration that killed it. From the looks of it Microsoft seems to be geared to address all three rather well.)
This future would benefit from universal, non-proprietary docking stations, for the same reason we have standardized plugs/sockets for power, ethernet, USB, etc.
The new USB Type C standard can provide up to 100W of power, while at the same time letting you use it to send DisplayPort (and you can connect to HDMI or DVI devices with a simple adapter) signalling. And your network connection.
But with wireless charging + wireless data/display casting chances are it won't be that long before you won't need a wire for any of this most of the time.
This is pretty cool, although I wonder if/how they plan to deal with things that should really be only on the desktop display - particularly things that take up a lot of space on still pretty space constrained phones. The obvious example is programming tools that don't really make sense on a phone or say a large synced repo you don't want using phone space.
I get that they're not really v1 concerns, loads of people will probably be served amazingly by Outlook + office - but I love the form factor and hope it's feasible for what I do one day!
On another note, there didn't seem to be any sign of a notification of chance for interaction on the desktop display when he got a text. That seems like a no brainer, like pushbullet on Android or Apple's continuity. It's much less of a context switch to reply to messages on the big screen and would be a really great addition.
But the potential really is in the Phone->PC continuum. If I can take a beefy x86 phone (Intel seems to be inching closer to that reality) running windows and use it like phone most time and then dock it onto a big screen with keyboard and mouse - that really is a killer feature. It could change things in Microsoft's favor if they manage to get the integration and hardware parts right.
(I should say that the concept is not new - Motorola tried that with the Atrix - but it was underpowered hardware, flakey software and little integration that killed it. From the looks of it Microsoft seems to be geared to address all three rather well.)