Skip to main content

This throwback mini computer puts a Windows 11 PC in your pocket

If you are bored with thin black rectangular smartphones and clamshell laptops, then the Higole PC should tweak your interest. It’s a pocket PC. You read that right. The Gole Higole PC 2022 is an entire desktop PC and it fits in your pocket.

Microsoft attempted the pocket PC back in the Windows XP era and it failed miserably. Of course, that was long before everyone on the planet carried a smartphone. But Microsoft never tried again. Chinese company Gole, based in Shenzhen, is taking a swing at it in 2022.

The Higole mini PC up on its side.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

This pocket PC is available in a couple of flavors. The top-tier versions use an Intel Celeron J4125 with four cores and 2.7 GHz boost, while a cheaper model uses a discontinued Celeron N4000 chip. There must have been some excess stock laying around.

Recommended Videos

The unit comes with 8 GB of LPDDR4X RAM and an integrated Intel UHD 600 GPU. Not bad for such a small device. With the two full HDMI 2.0 ports on the side, you could use it with two 4K monitors. There are four USB-A ports, a single USB-C port (for power only), an Ethernet port, and a microSD slot.

It packs a 5.5-inch 1280x800p touchscreen display into a boxy 5.6-inch-tall case. It’s only 0.7 inches thick, and Gole says this is the smallest and lightest PC ever built.

HIGOLE PC 2022 The Smallest MINI Touch Screen PC

Of course, this isn’t a gaming handheld. It’s more of a productivity machine. You can answer emails, take notes, and make appointments with it. Gole calls it an “all-in-one mini PC to meet a variety of life needs.” While you can use the touchscreen display for on-the-go tasks, Gole appears to consider this more of a docked machine. This pocket PC seems designed to be used with monitors. It gives people the ability to carry their computer around with them, much like a laptop without the bulk.

The Higole PC is being crowdfunded on Indiegogo. They had a goal of $3,000 and have surpassed $18,000 in funding as of this writing. The base model is listed at $200 and the high-end model is $295, with a planned release in September 2022.

Nathan Drescher
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Nathan Drescher is a freelance journalist and writer from Ottawa, Canada. He's been writing about technology from around the…
Windows 11 to let you use your phone as a webcam
Using an Android phone as a webcam.

The Windows 11 update 24H2 includes a new feature called Connected Camera that lets you turn your smartphone into a webcam. The folks at PCWorld have tested the feature out, and it looks pretty easy to use, though you do need to have an Android phone to use it.

Using your phone as a webcam -- either for your desktop or your laptop -- isn't new, but native support for it has been patchy. At first, people had to use third-party apps to do the job. Then Apple users got Continuity Camera, and a few years later Android 14 users got a similar feature, too.

Read more
Windows 11 24H2 may crash your PC if you have a certain SSD
The blue screen of death in Windows.

Microsoft's Windows 11 2024 Update, more commonly referred to as 24H2, is here, but it's not without issues. Reports from disgruntled users have flooded various forums, talking about constant blue screens of death (BSOD) that have appeared since they updated to the latest version of Windows. Although Microsoft has yet to officially acknowledge the problem, the users seem to have pinpointed the cause of it, and even found a workaround.

So far, it looks like these crashes are fairly limited in scope, as they seem to happen if you have one of a few Western Digital SSD models. Other SSD vendors appear unaffected so far. As reported on the WD Community Forums, users are getting BSODs with the error "critical process has died" ever since they updated to the 24H2 update.

Read more
Microsoft is fixing my biggest problem with Windows 11 on handhelds
Asus ROG Ally with the Windows lock screen.

We're finally starting to make some progress on the handheld experience of Windows 11. Although Windows 11 handhelds like the ROG Ally X are some of the best handheld gaming PCs you can buy, that's despite their use of Windows, not because of it. Now, the latest Windows 11 Insider preview (build 22631.4387) adds a feature that should make navigating the OS much easier on a handheld -- a keyboard built for gamepads.

Windows has included an onscreen keyboard for years, and updates over the last couple of years have even made it usable with touch inputs. On a handheld, however, there are two problems with the keyboard. You can't invoke it naturally -- you have to bind Windows + Ctrl + O to a hotkey -- and you can't use your controller to navigate it. With the new update, Microsoft is fixing that last point, at the very least.

Read more