Lenovo to Launch Windows Phone Handsets in Mid-2015

Microsoft at its WinHEC conference in Shenzhen on Tuesday announced Lenovo as its strategic partner along with Tencent and Qihu 360. The company says that Lenovo has also committed to "build Windows phones, to be available in mid-year 2015 via China Mobile."

While the Redmond giant is approaching its Windows 10 release, which company confirmed to get available this summer in 190 countries and 111 languages, and is going to launch Windows 10 for phones, Lenovo will still be launching Windows Phone OS smartphone in mid-2015, as suggested in the presentation slide by Microsoft (via The Verge). An upgrade to Windows 10 for the Lenovo phones can be expected, if not a launch with Windows 10 onboard.

At the conference, Microsoft also named Xiaomi as its testing partner for Windows 10. It announced that the company is working with China's Xiaomi to offer some customers a test version of Windows 10 to install on their Mi 4 smartphones.

Microsoft added in a statement that it would be helping select group of Xiaomi Mi 4 users "flash their phones with the new Windows 10 OS" on their handsets and let them "contribute to its future release later this year."

The details of the programme are not yet known, but with Microsoft's use of the word flash, the company will probably be offering a ROM, similar to custom ROMs like CyanogenMod, to install on the Android smartphone. Microsoft's delivery of Windows 10 ROM for Mi 4 users, however, is said to be with a software that helps "convert" an Android phone into a Windows 10 phone, complete with access to all Microsoft services, according to sources close to the matter cited by Techcrunch.