Microsoft nailed down a partnership with Samsung to bring calling functionality to the Your Phone app with the Galaxy Note 10
, but the feature should soon also be available to all Android devices.Twitter user Ajith confirmed that the Your Phone app with calls and dialer support is working with his Realme 3 Pro phone.
The screenshots indicate that the Windows 10 app's settings page will allow users to toggle on the ability to "allow this app to make and manage calls from my phone".
At the Galaxy Note 10 launch last month, Samsung and Microsoft said Note 10 users would be able to use the Phone screen feature to mirror their phone screens on their Windows 10 PCs and use their PC keyboards, mouse, and touchscreens to interact directly with their phone apps.
Microsoft said that "later this year" it will enable receiving mobile phone calls directly from PCs using Your Phone, so the functionality will probably turn up first in a preview build of Windows 10.
Microsoft's Your Phone app can already relay text messages, sync notifications, and share images between your phone and your PC, but soon it will gain the ability to make phone calls. Microsoft confirmed that the feature is on the way during Galaxy Unpacked 2019. The feature will roll out in the future, but we managed to get a first-look and to go hands-on with the new feature.
With the Your Phone app you can dial a number or search your contacts to make a call. In our hands-on, we couldn't show off viewing call history, but that feature will be available in the future.
The feature was first spotted on Twitter by Ajith.
Your Phone treats your PC as a Bluetooth peripheral to make calls. The UI on the PC has a number pad and a button that allows you to transfer your call from your PC to your Android phone.
The bigger part of the tie-up on Galaxy Note 10
devices is that it ships with the popular Microsoft Outlook email app as well as OneDrive cloud storage for syncing content across phones and PCs. But it also can't harm Windows 10 for Your Phone features to be available to 800 million Windows 10 users who are likely part of Google's 2.5 billion Android user base. And it would help Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates make better use of his Samsung Galaxy phone, which runs on the operating system he regrets not having made in the winner-takes-all world of software.
The Your Phone app isn't yet a massive hit on the Google Play Store, having only racked up 10 million downloads.
The app is pre-installed on all Windows 10 devices running the Windows 10 October 2018 Update and later.