Microsoft recently announced that they have no plans on getting back into the mobile hardware business anytime soon, as it's just not logical or viable with the likes of Android and iOS being so far ahead. Instead, the company is waiting on some kind of "paradigm shift" in the mobile market that would enable them to compete again, but until that happens it is super unlikely we'll be getting any new "Windows 10 Mobile" hardware.

That doesn't mean Microsoft isn't working on something, however. We've known for several months now that Panos Panay and his team are working on some kind of Surface "Phone" which will basically be a much smaller Surface running Windows 10 Mobile that can make phone calls. With that in mind, we already know that unless a paradigm shift does happen, releasing a Surface "Phone" would make no logical sense, as it'd just fall face first right out of the gate as the mobile market simply won't accept Windows 10 Mobile. Best VPN providers 2020: Learn about ExpressVPN, NordVPN & more That's right now, but with this "paradigm shift", Microsoft is betting that people will start accepting Windows on their smartphones, but how, exactly? Well, it definitely isn't going to happen the way things are currently going; with iOS and Android towering way above Windows 10 Mobile, this is a fight Microsoft simply can't win. What it can do however, is attempt to change the way we think about smartphones, forever. In the 1970s, 80s and 90s, smartphones weren't really a thing. We simply had "mobile phones", which were kind of like the landline phones you had at home, except they weren't tethered to the wall by a wire. These mobile phones came in all shapes and sizes, and varied in features over time. At first, they were pretty basic, only being able to make phone calls, which funnily enough is why we called them mobile "phones".

At some point, over several years, these phones gained more and more features, and eventually we stopped calling them mobile phones and started calling them "smartphones". Many phone manufacturers tried building smartphones, but it wasn't until Apple unveiled the iPhone that consumers finally took notice of the concept and what a "smartphone" could actually be. The first iPhone in 2007 paved and shaped the way we think and use smartphones today. All smartphones are pretty similar in design, and that's all thanks to Apple. But at the time, our mobile phones were still primarily phones, which is why the term "smartphone" made sense. But, and let's be honest with ourselves here, most of us aren't buying smartphones for the 'phone' bit anymore. We haven't been for years. Most of us don't actually buy smartphones because they can make phone calls — no, we're buying them for the apps, the mobile internet access, the streaming music and videos, the messaging and email, and perhaps for the ability to get a little bit of work done here and there. Of course, we still use the phone part sometimes, I'm not saying we don't, but a lot of us definitely don't buy smartphones because they're a phone first and foremost anymore. If you think about it, that's basically a PC in all matters of the word. Sure, it's not a desktop PC, and smartphones definitely aren't as powerful as full PCs, but that doesn't really matter if these smartphones can do what we expect them to do. We've set for ourselves expectations of what each kind of PC can do, a smartphone, a desktop, a laptop, and a tablet — they're all designed for different things.