You might not be very familiar with Elephone, a Chinese smartphone manufacturer, but that might change soon. The company announced that its upcoming smartphone will come in two variants: one with Android 5.0 Lollipop and one with both Android 5.0 Lollipop and Windows 10, thanks to its dual-boot functionality, reports Beta News.
Such functionality isn’t exactly new: We’ve seen quite a few tablets do the same thing in recent months. However, looking at both Asus and Huawei, Google wasn’t too keen on devices that can boot into Android and Windows. That, of course, hasn’t stopped Elephone from creating a smartphone with dual-boot functionality. To make it even more appealing, the Elephone has high-end specs to go along with the special software switching trick.
Both the Lollipop and dual-boot variants of the Elephone have a 5.5-inch, 2,560 x 1,440 pixel resolution screen, as well as a whopping 4GB of RAM, a fingerprint scanner, and a battery that’s “more than 3,800mAh.” Where they differ is in the beating hearts, which are more commonly known as processors, and cameras. The Android variant packs a 64-bit MediaTek MTK6795 processor and a 21-megapixel Sony IMX 230 rear camera. By comparison, the dual-boot version is powered by an Intel Atom chipset and has a 20.7-megapixel camera.
Whether there’s a huge group of people that yearns for a smartphone that can dual-boot Android and Windows is a question that doesn’t exactly have the clearest of answers. We haven’t seen that many people clamor for such a smartphone, and even if Indian manufacturer Karbonn beat Elephone to the punch in that respect, we doubt sales are anywhere near great.
Elephone didn’t reveal any pricing for the variants, though the company is known for relatively aggressive pricing, so we should expect both versions to be relatively affordable. The Android-only version will go on sale in May, while the dual-boot version will be available sometime in June.
