HP shows secret smartphone with Windows 10 Mobile at telecom fair MWC

HP has shown a still secret smartphone on a closed part of the stand at the Mobile World Congress telecom fair. HP employees wouldn’t say anything about the phone, but several things were visible to the naked eye.

The phone behind glass has a screen that looks the same as that of the current Elite X3. That is a 6″ OLED panel with a resolution of 2560×1440 pixels. On the back you can see a camera that protrudes slightly, with a dual LED flash and a fingerprint scanner below. The phone has a metal edge with antenna stripes.

On the front, a few changes can be seen compared to the Elite x3, which finally appeared in the Benelux last fall. For example, unlike the current x3, the new device does not have an iris scanner above the screen and there is no speaker grill visible below the screen, where the x3 has a Bang & Olufsen brand. The phone will be compatible with current accessories and will therefore have a USB-C port at the bottom. At the top is a 3.5mm jack for headsets.

HP will announce the device at a later date and had cleared a closed part of the booth that was only accessible at the invitation of an HP employee. In addition to a smartphone, there was also a new version of the ‘lap dock’, with which the device can connect to turn it into a laptop.

It is obvious that the device uses a Snapdragon 835-soc from Qualcomm. That will be the first soc to support Windows 10 on ARM, which will allow users to emulate Win32 programs on the device. The x3 allows users to stream x86 programs through an HP service, but that would no longer be necessary with a Snapdragon 835 on board.

HP itself said it was not ready for the announcement of the smartphone, but wanted to use the demonstration behind closed doors to make it clear that its interest in the mobile version of Windows 10 still exists. Microsoft itself last released a smartphone with its own mobile operating system a year ago.