Microsoft’s new mobile effort ditches Windows for Android, and it’s not a phone
Microsoft’s new mobile effort ditches Windows for Android, and it’s not a phone
Publish Date: 2026-06-08 06:14:00
Source Domain: www.androidpolice.com
Microsoft has revealed it’s working on a new mobile-related platform called Project Solara, which it demonstrated on stage during its Build 2026 developer conference.
It’s closer to Android than Windows Mobile, and not only is one of the first prototypes closely linked to a smartphone, it may come to cutting-edge wearables including smartglasses in the future too.
What is Project Solara?
Microsoft has had a few goes at pulling attention away from Apple, Google, and Samsung with phones and other mobile devices in the past.
Unfortunately, whether it’s through the acquisition of Nokia, the creation of Windows Phone, or the release of devices like the Microsoft Surface Duo, it has never quite succeeded.
Project Solara isn’t a smartphone operating system, although Microsoft’s platform is based on Android Open Source Project (AOSP), but an app-less, AI agent-first platform made for both mobile and stationary devices.
It’s also, at this stage at least, not aimed at consumers. Microsoft’s targeting businesses with Project Solara, but the familiarity of the prototypes shown during Build 2026, and Microsoft’s vision for its future, suggest it may not stay that way forever.
Agentic ID badge
Microsoft demonstrated a prototype ID badge concept equipped with Project Solara, which turned it into a mini phone you wear on a lanyard.
The ID badge has a touchscreen, a fingerprint sensor, a camera, a Qualcomm processor, microphones and speakers, Wi-Fi, and 5G connectivity. It may look like an ID badge, but it sounds a lot like a phone.
Instead of Android or Windows, it uses Project Solara to put Microsoft’s Copilot AI to work. Microsoft’s demo video showed the prototype badge working like a phone in a healthcare environment.
The camera scanned information, AI agents responded to voice commands, tasks were received and displayed on…
