Comment by pjc50
8 years ago
I've got one in my pocket right now: Asus Zenfone 2. It just runs regular Android. Even has an "Intel Inside" logo on the back.
Windows has never had great dynamic scaling, so trying to run regular apps on a phone would be a nightmare of tiny click targets. Metro apps would scale better, but that was the whole point of UWP.
IMO they've given up slightly too early. They could have written an Android-on-Windows compatibility layer, or various other things, but Microsoft just can't handle a market where they aren't dominant. The only way they could leverage their dominance would be to break Exchange ActiveSync and say "if you want your calendar on your phone, it has to be a Windows phone".
And Intel have pulled back from the low-power area (mobiles, Edison) because they're not competitive there. Maybe the same "can't function when not market leader" problem.
> They could have written an Android-on-Windows compatibility layer
MS had Android emulation[0] in the works for Windows Mobile 10 but then decided to cancel it citing it was "unnecessary".
[0]https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-officially-cancels-...
> Android-on-Windows compatibility layer
This was one of the big mistakes made by OS/2 when they were competing against Windows. They created a compatibility layer for Windows applications, which meant that developers never wrote native apps for their platform, leading to a very poor user experience and gave Windows a leg-up on its competition. I doubt Microsoft wants to make the same mistake.