China could soon be home to a dual-boot Windows 10, Android 5.0 smartphone named the Wei Yan Sofia.
The renders which first appeared on Chinese social networking site Weibo, show a slim alloy bodied phone with arched rear panel and slim body design. It’s not clear who the manufacturer of the phone is, but the design has touches of HTC and Nokia Lumia phones.
Social posts show the images along with purported specifications which include a low-cost Intel processor, 2GB RAM, LTE, 13 mega-pixel rear camera, 5 mega-pixel front, 5-inch FHD display and 32GB internal memory.
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Obviously the main draw to the phone is its ability to run either Android 5.0 or Windows mobile OS. We’ll keep our eyes on more news and bring details as we find them.
[ GizChina.it ]
THE PROPHECY!!!
Honestly, if this phone releases… and even if it costs around $500 USD and has a GPU on par or above the one in the Snapdragon 801, I would buy it. I always wanted to try out a Windows-based phone, but never wanted to own 2 physical phones.
Don’t give them ideas…we want it at around 200$-300$
below $200 would be a mad bargain!
(I’LL TAKE IT AT THAT!)
Yeah true, but most likely the phone will cost more than others with similar specs, mainly due to the Windows OS. I doubt Microsoft will be giving the OS for free…
Last year Microsoft gave Windows for Free to any device with 8″ screen or less, so this could be the case
Dual boot on a phone sounds like a great idea.
/s
nice phone dual boot and supported upgrade system
its a big risk to take because its not a well known brand at all.
It would be interesting outside of Asia as well if it at least has the ROM in English (Lollipop). With Windows I am quite sure you get English set up. 😉
Smatr Phone?
This is not the first time we’ve heard of this…the Neo m1 promised to provide the same but that the phone would first ship with android and windows would be coming in a few months..not sure if they delivered…
If anyone would be kind enough to confirm that the neo m1 currently has working a dual os boot
Nope, they never delivered.
Weiyan’s other notable product is the dual-boot Windows 8/Android 4.2 tablet Surge Tab PH-101. The Chinese company (which was apparently founded in 2013) has three other Windows-8 devices so far, two tablets and one netbook.
I have to admit, from the renders alone this is one of the best Chinese designs I’ve seen yet. However, if it’s going to be anything like the Teclast dual-boot X98 then I won’t have high hopes for the user experience:
“By combining two OSes into one tablet, the tablet is essentially split into halves. That decreases internal storage for each side. Teclast compounds that by including even more pre-installed apps on the Android side.” (Source: https://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2014/11/27/teclast-dual-boot-x98-air-3g-gets-a-review/ )
My hunch is that it will be similar to the Teclast tablet: they will split up the 32GB into two separate partitions that won’t talk to each other, which means no shared storage between the two OS’s. I hope I’m wrong though, and they will leave a common FAT32 partition where you can store your media files to be shared between the two.
Dual boot is a great idea specially for consumers who want to try Windows 10 and not risking things like if they would like windows 10 or get used to it, and if they dont like it then they would have to sell off and buy a new phone. The dual boot option does in a way help consumers to try two different operating systems depending on the mood. Maybe later someone can try and develop way that two different android flavours for dual boot something like say Cyanogenmod 12 and say Color OS or some other flavour. The pricing would be important, if its high priced people would not try it.if its priced say 200-250$ (and depending on what actual specs it comes with) people might give a try, More than that and it becomes cheaper to buy a Windows Phone and try it and also another android phone.