Hands on: The OneCompute Moto Mod could turn your Android phone into your PC - hallaliedids

We just saw Motorola do something with Mechanical man that adequate to now, only Windows 10 has been fit to do. Motorola's OneCompute prototype Moto Mod takes the concept behind Windows 10's Continuum feature—the ability to project a Windows phone onto a PC—and ports it to Android. Shown at parent company Lenovo's Tech World exhibition Thursday in San Francisco, OneCompute could encourage blur the line between smartphone and desktop.

OneCompute is conceived as one of the magnetic Moto Mods lend-ons that potty clip connected to Motorola's freshly phone, the Moto Z, announced Thursday. The OneCompute technology uses that Moto Mod as a radio set bridge deck to a wired dockage. The dock communicates with a traditionalistic monitor, providing a desktop-like feel for.

Officially, Motorola employees aforesaid OneCompute is share of the Moto Mods Developer Kit, designed to show off the power of Moto Mods and lure third parties to the weapons platform. Only both the Moto Mod and pier itself are proprietary and have the appearance of near-inalterable hardware. Without lengthy tests, it's difficult to say what, if whatever, bugs Crataegus oxycantha have crept in. But my gut says that Motorola plans to ship this as a mathematical product, and soon.

Mark Hachman

Motorola's OneCompute hardware: the Moto Z phone, the OneCompute Moto Mod, and the dock.

Why this matters: Peter Hortensius, Lenovo's chief engineering science officer, cautioned reporters not to think of this A an Android version of Microsoft's Continuum. Duly noted. But he besides pointed out the comparatively Sir David Low numbers of users who may personal a Windows phone. (To be fair, Moto Mods will work with only one Android phone at launch, which means OneCompute's share—when and if it ships—could be equally small.) Motorola showed off  the Android version of Discussion Mobile running on a Moto Z, filling a widescreen monitor like it belonged there. Buckeye State, and it ran in a window that could be snapped to the left or right field, just like in Windows 10. A major productiveness advantage the Windows Mobile platform enjoyed apparently just gaseous.

A Kiss to die for

Along the rear of each Moto Z are sixteen metal bumps, which, when the Mods are magnetically attached on to the phone itself, provide electrical power and pass information to and fro. In the case of the JBL SoundBoost loudspeaker system or the Insta-Share Projector Moto Mod, all of the hardware is self-contained. Not so for the OneCompute.

Gull Hachman

The Moto Z's electrical connections are how the magic happens.

The OneCompute solution uses a Moto Mod with a chip embedded in it from Keyssa, a small Atomic number 14 Valley startup that hired the minds behind HDMI and the LPDDR4 memory standard, among others. The accompany's short-range Kiss wireless technology transfers data at nearly 6Gbps over rattling chunky ranges, and preserves USB, HDMI and DisplayPort protocols American Samoa well. (Acer shapely the Kiss technology into the Acer Aspire Switch 12 S and its associated dock.)

Almost Humanoid tablets economic consumption MHL to reproduce an Android video display onto an external monitor, but "MHL has limitations," Motorola executives aforementioned. For one thing, MHL can be laggy. That mightiness be because MHL too supports both 5-pin and 11-pin connectors, and most manufacturers haven't done a good lin of telling you whether the phone or pad of paper actually supports MHL, let alone which connection it supports.

Mark Hachman

Motorola's dock uses USB ports and an HDMI connection.

Motorola built its ain dock, which boasts three USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI output, and a power connector—all connected to the receiver via a brusk cable. The external receiver's important because it includes a charging shell, wirelessly charging the phone as information technology communicates with the video display. Conceptually, the undivided setup is pretty ungainly—data is passed from the phone to the Mod to the telephone receiver to the loading dock to the display via an HDMI wire—only it seemed to work in practice.

A functioning desktop interface

Connected, the Moto Z displayed a desktop twin to it of Android tablets like the Samsung Galaxy series, with an few key icons (call, contacts, email) at the bottom of the block out, and a familiar range of icons at the top. The sole hint that the setup is within reason strange are the ternion familiar Humanoid buttons—back, family, and the menu key—that are tucked into the corner of the silver screen, rather than the bottom.

Mark Hachman

The Motorola OneCompute app, which manages the hardware.

It's not exactly clear what changes Motorola made to Android to enable OneCompute, though the company says they were minimal. In for tweaks, however, are very Windows-like: Windows had options to snap it to the left, right, or superlative of the screen. Apps could constitute windowed, and information cut and pasted from app to app. Applications could also be run inside standard windows, though this could have but been a criterion Mechanical man N implementation.

Otherwise, Motorola doesn't seem to have done too such to help OneCompute. The company authored a OneCompute management app and built abstracted AMP Connect and AMP Disconnect apps. (A demo telecasting that the company created—and which is in our sessile video, above—shows that one of the advantages of OneCompute is the ability to dock and undock a video, piece streaming, without needing to resume it.)

Microsoft

The rival: Microsoft's Display Dock performs a smiliar operate, but for Windows.

Consumers can be finical about such things atomic number 3 plugging in cables, and the $99.99 cost Microsoft charges for its wired Display Dock way that probably only a tiny subset of users bought one for work and home. Plopping your phone onto a wireless charging dock thatalso connects to your monitor, though, seems a wad more appealing.

2 pieces still suffer to fall into rate: Motorola needs to ensure that the OneCompute solution whole kit and caboodle, and cheaply—and that includes the Price of the Moto Modern and the tail, overly.  Unluckily, combining a wireless charging pad, USB ports, and an HDMI connective will in all likelihood push up the Price well higher than the $30 or so I'd prefer. Still, the OneCompute construct means that Android phones could progressively pres Windows PCs—bad news for Microsoft, maybe, but a win for consumers.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/415148/hands-on-the-onecompute-moto-mod-could-turn-your-android-phone-into-your-pc.html

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