New point of contact with Google’s mobile operating system is called “Your Phone”. Comes along with the update of the popular Redmond Launcher for the Big G os

IT IS CALLED “Your Phone”, “Your Phone”, and is an app that replicates the experience of Android applications on Windows 10. Starting from the latest update of the Microsoft operating system, the “October 2019 Update” available in fact, you can double the content of the smartphone, with its load of app, directly on the PC. So you can do from the PC or 2-in-1 type Surface everything you do with the phone, from sending messages to sync photos. In a certain opening still not total, rather limited, but important to the competitive ecosystem of Big G. And also to Apple.

To be honest, it is the point of arrival (even, still intermediate) of a path started last fall with the “Fall Creator Update”, when the Redmond colossus had started to allow the association between the devices of different families in a way to make them communicate with each other and allow a whole series of interactions. Now, with YourPhone, you get to “mirroring” with photos, messaging apps for Android, ie texting, and web browsing. Later, however, a more complete support will start for all Android applications. In a fast and complete doubling of the experience from small to big screen.

The goal of “Your Phone”, already seen at the Build 2018 conference, is therefore a perfect synchronization between the two ecosystems (Windows 10 and Android), now that Microsoft no longer has rival products in the smartphone world (the Surface Phone does not c ‘it is a trace, the world Lumia has long since died). The new app is also formally compatible with iOS, although it works in a rather limited and we do not know if Microsoft will really point us, more interested in marrying the experiences of the green robot with its operating system more and more open. In an unimaginable “relationship” until recently. However, between the two giants there was already a first step of a certain interest. It’s called Microsoft Launcher, has just been updated to version 5.0 and allows you to customize your Android device, giving a touch of Redmond to the home screen and beyond, and especially by integrating the services of Microsoft suites like Outlook and Skype as well as browsing Edge.

Sometimes you can’t stop for a text. Now you don’t have to. Get Your Phone app and text right from your PC. Available now in the #Windows10 October 2018 Update. #MicrosoftEvent pic.twitter.com/JCXP3cJ3Zl

— Windows (@Windows) October 2, 2018

In short, for Windows, a progressive approach strategy with competing operating systems. From this point of view, the Windows Timeline, a new Windows 10 chronology tool already presented last April, should be included – at least in part. It allows you to track documents and web pages on which you worked in the days, weeks or months before, collecting and orchestrating everything in a collection to open and explore quickly, to resume work right where you left it. Also in this case, enabling synchronization as well as the cloud, the collection will integrate all the documents on the other connected devices. The news unveiled at the event in New York during which Windows has also presented the new Surface (Studio 2, Laptop 2 and Surface Pro 6, in addition to Surface Headphones) lies in the fact that the launcher seen before now supports Windows Timeline. So, in fact, this register of activities also lands on Android devices. And it is a further piece of continuity.

“Your phone” should therefore start with all the features only in the first months of next year. On the one hand it should simplify what until now you could do through other and more cumbersome systems, like the Bluestacks emulator, Vysor, Phoenix OS, Visual Studio emulator for Android, Andyroid and many other programs. On the other hand will continue on the road of “replacement” of Windows Phone (by the way, the 8.1 version seems to have finally come to an end): making Android the mobile part of Windows, at least in the ability to keep the two systems together and with less difficulty. It is no coincidence that this “hug strategy” is also expanding to virtual assistants. This time not to that of Google but with the Alexa of Amazon, who can now speak with the owner Cortana, and vice versa.

In short, it is only the beginning of the new strategy of Satya Nadella in making Windows an open work infrastructure, closer to iOS and especially to Android and at the same time a way to keep users working longer on Microsoft devices , all oriented towards productivity and education as the last arrivals, in true non revolutionary compared to the previous ones