The HP Elite x3, HP's premium smartphone that is promised to function as a desktop computer, is finally available for $699 without the dock accessory.
The HP Elite x3's dock functions as an omnibus accessory that enables the user to connect an external display, among other things, and take advantage of the Continuum feature on Windows 10, which allows for a seamless desktop experience from a smartphone that fits in your pocket.
Without the dock, the smartphone's promise to deliver desktop-level functionality is greatly reduced, although it does slash $100 off the main price. For those of you who just want the phone, you can get it dock-free. However, there's a slight caveat: the dock-free variant only shows up on HP's online store for small and medium businesses and not to the general public. It's still predominantly sold as a package.
Doing away with the dock seems odd given the fact that the Elite x3's selling point is its seamless desktop integration, targeting business-minded individuals as the main benefactor for the Elite x3's productivity features. It remains to be reasoned out by HP why it suddenly offered a dock-free Elite x3, but the option is there.
That's not to say that the Continuum feature on the Elite x3 won't work without the dock — it will. The Elite x3 does support what is called a Lap Dock, which is a dummy laptop accessory that acts as the phone's external display. The laptop has no RAM, storage or processor. It's simply an output device that takes advantage of the Elite x3's Continuum feature. While it might be appealing, the Lap Dock is priced quite high at $599, so you have to shell out quite a lot if you plan on getting it.
The Elite x3 started to hit Microsoft's brick-and-mortar stores on Oct. 10, after a slight tussle with preorders and a sales halt due to problems with the device's performance and a camera that constantly crashed. The issues have since been ironed out by the Windows 10 Mobile Anniversary update, and the device is in perfect working condition.
It's unclear whether HP will also open up the dock-free variant of the Elite x3 to general consumers. Microsoft might sell it on its own online store too. Keep in mind that if you purchase the dock-free variant and decide that you'll need it at a later time, you have to pay $150 to purchase the thing altogether, which is $50 more than the $799 bundle.
The HP Elite x3 is a Windows-powered smartphone that rocks a 5.9-inch Quad HD display with 494 ppi. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor alongside an Adreno 530 GPU. It has a 16-megapixel rear-facing camera and an 8-megapixel front-facing camera. It comes with 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage.
You can purchase the HP Elite x3 with Desk Dock bundle at HP's own store.
