Microsoft video touts Continuum for Windows 10 phones, says it will require new devices

Microsoft announced its Continuum experience would come to Windows 10 smartphones during its Build 2015 keynote today, and now the company has released a video showcasing the feature.

In the video, Joe Belfiore, one of the leads for Microsoft's Windows team, explains that Windows 10 users can now connect their phones to peripherals to get a full computer experience. Thanks to Windows 10's universal apps, the same experiences that users get on the PC will be shown on an external display when using Continuum for phones.

"You'll be able to carry a new phone devices in your pocket," he says, "and then, at any time, connect it to a mouse, keyboard and larger screen [to] unleash a PC experience almost just like the one you'd get from a full PC device."

Thanks to new Qualcomm processors, Belfiore says, users can still see and use their phone screens while connected and using a full display. This means a Windows 10 phone user could answer a call while editing an Excel document on a display powered by the same phone.

Belfiore does note, however, that the feature "requires new, special hardware capabilities which will be built into phone devices that will ship with Windows 10 after it's available this summer."