Dell Windows Phone With 'Laptop-Class' Intel Processor Leaks: More Than A Concept, But Will It Launch?

It looks like product renders of the Windows-powered smartphone Dell was working on have surfaced, courtesy of trusted tipster Evan Blass.

The photo shows what appears to be the phone that Dell was reportedly supposed to outfit an Intel processor with, in the same vein as those powering laptops out in the market today. When Evan Blass first posted the photo, many falsely assumed that it was the much-anticipated Surface Phone by Microsoft, but it wasn't.

The photo actually shows the smartphone Dell was developing, "was" being the operative word here, since development was allegedly cancelled, so don't hold your breath for a Dell smartphone powered by an x86 Intel processor able to run Windows legacy software instead of miniature mobile counterparts.

Specifications of the cancelled phone are scant, but the processor's x86 architecture speaks volumes for what could have been possible. The x86 tidbit came from Thurrott, citing a source familiar with the phone. If development came through, we could have seen a smartphone packing probably the most powerful processor inside a mobile device in history. Dell was wise to collaborate with Windows on this, since Windows 10 Mobile readily supports Intel X86 processors. With Windows 10 on the cancelled device, Microsoft's Continuum feature could have taken advantage of the beefy specs.

We know how the Continuum feature works with the HP Elite x3, which HP advertises as capable of the full desktop experience, a quality it owes largely to Continuum, a Windows 10 functionality that turns capable phones into desktops by virtue of connecting an external display, a dedicated keyboard and a mouse.

Just imagine Continuum coupled with a powerful processor on a phone and you get a true and seamless non-disruptive desktop experience made possible by a tiny flagship. It almost eliminates the need for a separate laptop, making it easy to assume that if the phone came into realization, a laptop dock could have come bundled with it, ready to harness the power of the phone's chip.

It's up for discussion why the phone couldn't push through, but a key contributor to this might be the cancellation of Intel's low-end segment as a restructuring move back in May, putting a lid on the production of Intel Atom processor for mobile devices.

While the phone remains a pipe dream even with the product renders, Evan Blass is slated to share more details about it shortly, slapping on a "More than just a concept" teaser tag along with a photograph showing several of the Dell smartphone's features.

Do you think we'll ever see an honest-to-goodness smartphone with a laptop-class Intel processor? Feel free to sound off in the comments section below!