Is the leaked HP Falcon Windows phone evidence of HP's return to making phones?

Microsoft wants to make Windows 10 a success on both the desktop and on the smartphone. The new Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL may not be the devices to do it, but there are rumors about a new super-phone called the HP Falcon, which may have the right stuff inside. Despite the name, it's unknown if the phone really is made by HP, but here's everything we think we know about it so far.

Evidence of the HP Falcon first showed up on the GFXBench benchmarking website. There's no way to verify the information is accurate at the moment, but the specs aren't unbelievable for a future phone. However, falsifying benchmark tests is simple, so take everything as pure speculation for now.

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According to the test, the HP Falcon is a big, phablet-sized device with a 5.8-inch screen, and a 2560 x 1440 pixel resolution. The big news here is the inclusion of the Snapdragon 820 processor from Qualcomm. Recently announced by the chip manufacturer, it's expected to find a home inside many of 2016's major phone releases. We're yet to see the first though.

Two cameras are supposedly built into the HP Falcon. A 20-megapixel camera on the front, and a 12-megapixel camera on the rear. 43GB of storage is listed, which probably converts to 64GB when used space is taken into account, but less than 1GB of RAM is mentioned. If someone went to the trouble of faking the results, it seems odd they wouldn't give the phone a chunk of RAM too.

What is it? We've no idea. The HP Falcon name hasn't come up before, and HP hasn't been making mobile devices for sometime. The last time was January 2014 with the Slate 6 and Slate 7 VoiceTab, two Android-powered tablet/phone hybrids only released in India. Before this was a long line of HP phone failures, and the destruction of Palm after acquiring it in 2010. In late 2014 HP split into two factions, the business-focused Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and the consumer-driven HP Inc., but little has been said about mobile since.

The HP Falcon may be a never-to-be-released prototype, a peak at HP's return to phone making, a Microsoft test device, a fanboy's dream, or a weirdly codenamed version of the often rumored Surface phone. Whatever the situation, we'll keep you updated here.

Source: Is the leaked HP Falcon Windows phone evidence of HP's return to making phones?