Earlier in the year, Motorola and Lenovo combined powers to launch the ThinkPhone, a smartphone with productivity as its core focus. A recent collaboration with Microsoft means that the thinking person’s smartphone now offers an experience even closer to that of a regular PC.
More specifically, the ThinkPhone is getting full Windows 365 cloud integration, so you can more easily work from anywhere you have an internet connection. Ideal for hotdesking and clerical work, you can simply plug the phone into an external display via a USB-C cable, connect a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, and away you go.
We reviewed the ThinkPhone earlier in the year, where we enjoyed its flexibility and seamless integration with Windows PCs. On the left-hand side of the phone is a bright red button that activates “Ready For” mode. Similar to the likes of Samsung DeX and Apple’s Continuity, Motorola and Lenovo’s Ready For feature lets you wirelessly – or via USB – connect your phone and PC together for ease of cross-device use. Here, you can share clipboard content, drag and drop files between devices, and mirror or stream content from one device to another.
Retailing for $999, the ThinkPhone is out now from the likes of JB Hi-Fi, Officeworks, Lenovo, and will soon be stocked by Telstra Enterprise.
ThinkPhone and Windows add further functionality
Alongside the handy Windows 365 functionality, another Windows feature available with the ThinkPhone is Walkie Talkie from Microsoft Teams. You can program the handset’s red button to act as a push-to-talk function so you can quickly communicate with colleagues while out and about.
While Walkie Talkie has a specific use case in terms of outdoor teams, it’s the Windows 365 functionality that hints at an intriguing future of workplace technology. Naturally, Motorola recommends you pair the ThinkPhone with various Lenovo peripherals, including the ThinkVision display. Regardless of your choice of additional tech, the idea of plugging a phone into your monitor and using it as your main work device is a reality that’s now upon us.
For work that doesn’t require high-end computing power, there’s little reason why you couldn’t ditch the laptop in favour of a reasonably-powered phone. With pretty much every modern phone including some form of Bluetooth, you’re simply a wireless mouse and keyboard away from working at any desk, any time. One reason it’s being suggested as an alternative is as a cheaper way of kitting out workforces than buying a suite of laptops or desktop PCs.
Although the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip of the ThinkPhone may not power absolutely everything power users might need from a work device, it’d likely do just fine for most people. Especially considering how much of the hard work cloud computing takes care of these days, it’s certainly a viable option. For now, expect to see the ThinkPhone Windows 365 integration and Walkie Talkie functionality go live in the coming weeks.
