Is anyone using Continuum and a phone as your primary computer?

[Alligator42]

I have a 950 and a display dock connected to my monitor, but I go back and forth between a laptop and my phone using the monitor's input selection buttons. I'd like to know if anyone has gotten over the hurdle of using limited universal apps and is using their phone as their main computer. If so, how have you made it work and what problems are you experiencing?

 

[nausky]

I use it when I can! Honestly, the biggest thing holding it back right now is stability. I don't get a lot of app crashes, but continuum really blows it out of proportion. If I'm streaming anything, I have a lot of trouble with crashes.

Office/Outlook/Calendar/Readit/Aeries/Ouga? Excellent, in most situations I don't need anything else and the performance is great. Groove is a little underfeatured but it's fine. Just make sure to set your phone to a long display timeout and download the "disable screen" app if you just want to set some music playing & walk away.

YouTube (any app), 8Stream, Unstream... So unstable. Desyncing audio like crazy. I haven't seen any improvements on this front so I'm hoping its not a system limitation.

The hardware doesn't seem powerful enough to play my big 1080p mkv anime files. Framerate tanks and the audio desyncs.

 

[David Steadson]

My wife needed a new phone and new laptop but primarily uses only outlook and web, so we bought her a 950 a couple of weeks ago with the idea of using continuum. Unfortunately after ordering it we put in the code to redeem the free display dock and promptly got informed it would ship in 8-12 weeks. :eck:

So it's going to be quite a while.

I'd like to test Miracast, but unfortunately they've still not released it for our XBox One, so ordered a dongle from ebay while we await the dock.

 

[KyleGM]

My wife needed a new phone and new laptop but primarily uses only outlook and web, so we bought her a 950 a couple of weeks ago with the idea of using continuum. Unfortunately after ordering it we put in the code to redeem the free display dock and promptly got informed it would ship in 8-12 weeks. :eck:

So it's going to be quite a while.

I'd like to test Miracast, but unfortunately they've still not released it for our XBox One, so ordered a dongle from ebay while we await the dock.

Don't worry, everyone gets the 8-12 weeks notification, it will be with you in 1-2 weeks max

 

[Alligator42]

For Outlook and web browsing, I think Continuum would work fine. I just haven't put it through enough testing where I copy and move files, attach documents to email messages, create presentations in PowerPoint, etc. Of course, I'm really frustrated I can't install extensions in Edge yet. That single fact alone would make it a much better experience.

 

[Paul Stasik]

Before this can really replace the PC:

• Audio needs to play from behind tabs/edge.
• Display timeout needs to be removed.
• Excel needs pivot table functionality.
• 1080p videos from files need to able to play.
• More settings need to be made available, similar to W10 on PC, for things like mouse speed/control/keyboard/devices/etc
• Multiple window-support, side-by-side even would work. Should be able to truly look like a Windows Desktop mode.

 

[LarsCor]

I don't use it as a replacement for my primary pc. I do use it, however, instead of connecting my phone to my pc. For example for file management, a mouse and bigger screen can be handy, but now I don't have to plug my Lumia into my PC or swap a memroycard to manage music, photo's etc.

 

[Alexander Long]

I started to take the phone and display dock with me more often now, but leave my surface at home, Sleeping/network wake-able.
So most of time, I just use continuum to do quit some tasks, while if I do need do some work, i can remote control my surface through desktop remote beta app.

besides, I made a video on how to connect to two monitor, for multi tasking.

 

[Stanislav Bendik]

I am using it as a primary PC for few days now to test it. It works quiet good most of the time but some bugs/missing features are quite annoing as:
playing video in the background does not work (the only exception I found is the MYTUBE app )
Microsoft edge, well where to start? if you open more than 3 tabs it won't remember the content and everytime you switch between them it loads the page again and sometimes has really big problems with loading of some pages (windowscentra.com for instance), also crashes time to time.
Market app crashes often, but ok I do not need it for everydays work.
I had few unexpected reboots while using the Mirroring option in continuum (which I use quite often, 'cause of lack of universal apps)
The screentimeout is really anoying.
There are few other things but nothing major.

On the other hand, I am impressed how quickly it works most of the time (for a phone). I connected my 1TB external HDD to the display dock and it works perfectly, downloading data right to the HDD or playing movies (via Best Player UWP app) or music from it. So overall impression 75%. Hope it gets better with more universal apps and new software updates for Phone and Display dock.

 

[Sean_Money07]

Right now, I'm using my phone as my primary workstation for school when possible. Digital textbooks, Microsoft Edge, Office, OneNote and Groove Music have all played very nicely on my phone and bluetooth keyboard/mouse, save a couple key flaws. No current capability to snap apps makes so I can't practically take notes and read my textbook simultaneously unless I want to read on a small 5" display or my ThinkPad. Without the "disable screen" app, I also find great difficulty in working for too long without the risk of screen bleed. Then there are the inevitable student meetings at the campus library or during lecture. While this is where I feel a Continuum laptop chassis and battery would play very nicely, there is not a proper dock like this available quite yet, and certainly not one of quality. Once a student also breaks into some specific niche work, such as Nursing or more advanced IT work, a lack of those apps, UWP or otherwise, make it tricky, or for lack of a better word useless, to get work done. I'm certainly hoping x86 support can someday soon be a thing to help remedy this issue, albeit that's when an Intel processor is almost a must. Tl;dr - good for general work, but power usage and true "productivity" that Microsoft advertises isn't there yet.

 

[David Steadson]

Don't worry, everyone gets the 8-12 weeks notification, it will be with you in 1-2 weeks max

been more than a month now, and no sign of it

 

[Zeem Frostmaw]

If it counts, I now use Continuum in the place of my PC between 3 and midnight when my tethering speeds are crippled, but internet directly from the phone still hits 40mbps. Aeries is wonderful for Twitter and Edge takes care of Skype, Telegram messaging and pretty much everything else.

There are roadblocks when you run into websites that need plugins to work, and no Skype calling feels like an enormous missing piece on Microsofts part, but what we do have is reasonably fast and reliable.

Obviously no gaming either but I never expected that from Continuum (as much as I hope for Minecraft to live up to it's place as the Universal App poster boy)

 

[Jcmg62]

I've had continuum for a few days now, the plan is to use it as my laptop replacement. I primarily only use my laptop for web based database work, general web browsing, outlook and office, so continuum should work fine....HOWEVER....I have picked up a few problems in the first 24 hours. Web pages are crazy slow to load (ironically, windows central is the worst), trying to send emails with anything bigger than a 1MB attachment almost always crashes the programme, I can't get the gadgets app to recognise that continuum is plugged in so can't check for updates. Lastly, my 950 gets really, seriously hot, to the point where I'm worried some damage might occur to my phone. The plan for now is to stick with it for a week and see if I can remain as productive as I am on a traditional work laptop, but honestly I don't think I'll be packing my Surface Pro 4 away just yet

 

[Krystianpants]

I use it every day. But since not all my apps support it yet I usually RDP into my gaming PC. Get Remote Desktop Preview onto your phone and just remote into your laptop if you need to.

Today line messenger became universal which is one of the apps I use a lot. I still use a feedly client named Readiy that doesn't support continuum. If that gained support I would never have to RDP. I haven't found a good alternative yet. But I think as more apps come along with support it will definitely become an amazing solution that can be fully taken advantage of. MS still needs to solve some issues like multiple apps being used at once via a snap window or something of that nature. My guess is Redstone may eventually get it.

This really can be a game changer if we get more and more apps doing it. Build may reveal some nice surprises.

BTW Paul have you tried recently? I can play 4k files even. Not sure why you can't play 1080p.

 

[eportbook]

I use it on a daily basis. I also have a mobile device that I have built so that I can use continuum anywhere. I use Win32 apps using Azure RemoteApp

 

[blazewon22]

I was using it a lot and echo the sentiments of most folks. The Edge browser performance is HORRIBLE!!! VPN kills my ability to surf and that was a huge issue. Also background playing of youtube or any other video.

Using Continuum with Citrix to my work VDI desktop is good. Stepping away for a couple of minutes and having the screen lock is bad because all of the open apps close.

The workflow of checking email, opening an Office attachment making some minor changes is fine.

Trying to reference your calendar for a response to a meeting is a hassle to switch between the full screen windows.

Also its just app gap. Evernote, WebEx, Skype for Business all just don't work which limits my productivity.

Those cons make it more attractive to get a cheap laptop instead.

Regretting my decision to order a NexDock at this point.

Hulu has stopped working as well for me. Only audio past the splash screen.

Its promising but definitely beta.