Dual-boot phones: The answer to a question that nobody is asking

Why not let's go the whole hog and quad boot?

Don't you just love setting up your smartphone? Entering account details, downloading apps, putting all the settings just the way you like them? Isn't this experience so wonderful that you want to do it twice?

Wouldn't the smartphone experience just be so much better if it had two entirely different sets of apps? Apps that couldn't talk to each other, didn't even acknowledge each other's existence? Apps that burn up the already limited smartphone storage?

And who doesn't relish the opportunity to reboot their smartphone several times a day to switch between operating systems?

For a long time, there have been rumors that Microsoft was somehow encouraging phone manufacturers to produce dual-boot phones—hardware equipped with both Windows Phone and Android—as an attempt to introduce more people to its phone platform.

I've always assumed that this was somehow a misunderstanding. With an update coming some time this spring, Microsoft is making Windows Phone hardware compatible with Android. By supporting on-screen buttons (as Android already does), manufacturers will be able to use identical hardware for both Windows Phone and Android, enabling them to quickly and cheaply add Windows Phone SKUs alongside their existing Android models just by switching the firmware.

The decision would nonetheless be baked in at the factory; I assumed that this was somehow being misinterpreted as a decision that the customer makes once the device is in their hands. After all, nobody actually wants to dual-boot their phone and suffer all the inconveniences and annoyances that this would cause.

But it looks like I'm wrong. Trusted Reviews, speaking to Huawei, is reporting that dual-boot smartphones running both Windows and Android will hit the US market some time in the second quarter. Shao Yang, Huawei's CMO, told Trusted Reviews that this will make it "easier for people to choose Windows Phone," with Android offering a comfortable fallback position if Windows Phone doesn't work out for them.

While I'm not completely unimaginative—this kind of device might be quite useful for, say, software developers who want testbed phones—I can't help but feel that this is a solution that essentially nobody wants. Dual-booting is inconvenient at the best of times, as you inevitably end up in the wrong operating system for the task at hand, regardless of which operating system you're currently using. Add in the wasted disk space, the time wasted rebooting, and the overall complexity, and it's hard to believe that such a thing is truly coming to market.

via Technology - Google News http://ift.tt/1iGi5PO