Windows 10X on Lumia 950 XL shows a possible alternate reality

By JC Torres/

Beyond Windows CE in the old days, Microsoft has had very little luck in the mobile market. From Windows Phone to Windows 10 Mobile to even a brief tryst with Android, the company better known for its software has tried and failed to make it big on small devices. It is almost bittersweet, then, for some Microsoft fans to see an abandoned smartphone running a version of Windows that has yet to come and run it well enough to look even usable.

Back when it launched in 2015, the Lumia 950 XL had the makings of a premium flagship, at least in terms of hardware. It is perhaps a testament to its capabilities that, half a decade later, hackers and developers are still finding ways to run different versions of Windows on it, like Windows 10 on ARM, that Microsoft itself would never bring to the phone.

The latest comes from developer Gustave Monce who has just posted a short series of videos of Windows 10X running on the phone. Not by coincidence, this is the very same ardent developer who got Windows RT and Windows 10 running on the same device in the past years. It is no easy task but the fruits of that labor are almost worth it.

The video clips show Windows 10X running almost perfectly on the Lumia 950 XL. It helps that the upcoming version of Windows was designed from the ground up for touch interaction and to be scalable to different screen sizes and orientations. Of course, there is a bit of latency here and there given the age of the hardware, but it's still impressive to see what is meant to be a desktop operating system running properly on a phone.

Monce has provided an image for those who want to dare follow in his footsteps and this might be the closest users will get to a working version of Windows 10X for phones. Monce also revealed that Windows 10X even supports Continuum, another painful reminder of one of the promises that Microsoft failed to keep.

Recommended