Smartphones are already here, and I’d bet that getting a phone ready to fully replace a laptop may be enough for many years for many people. I’m a big fan of holographic UI too, but I must admit that it’s probably going to take some time until technology advances enough that people can use it every day, and it also depends on the – always surprising – mass trends. This way, regardless of their previous Lumia issues, Microsoft could finally get “mobile”, and a lot earlier than it could with HoloLens. (Side effect: WPF development may flourish again.) You might argue that running such an app with an emulator will consume a lot of power, but as usually desktop apps were (and are still) built for large screens, you’d probably have the phone connected to a monitor anyway (with Continuum), and therefore you could have the phone charging at the same time.

More and more rumors indicate that Microsoft will eventually release a “power phone” (Surface Phone?) From my understanding, that will be a phone that would be capable of running classic Windows desktop apps (Win32), and therefore they will be, indeed, more than a smartphone.

Hololens emulator for mac