- Intel has announced its Unison app will be discontinued at the end of June
- This was an alternative to Windows 11’s Phone Link functionality
- It was better in some ways – notably for iOS users, and with the app being more streamlined – so it’s sad to see a viable alternative go
Intel’s take on tying your phone in with your Windows 11 PC – the Unison app – is being shuttered, with Team Blue announcing that it’ll be discontinued for most users at the end of June 2025.
Windows Latest reports that Intel made the announcement in the Microsoft Store listing for app, stating that: “Intel Unison will soon be discontinued. The first step in its wind-down process is ending service for most platforms at the end of June 2025. Lenovo Aura platforms will retain service through 2025.”
If you’re scratching your head and thinking “I’ve never heard of Intel Unison” well, you wouldn’t be alone there. In a nutshell, it’s Intel’s version of Windows 11’s built-in functionality known as the Phone Link app.
Both Phone Link and Unison offer the ability to access iOS or Android smartphone functionality on the desktop of your Windows 11 PC. In the case of Intel Unison, the core abilities are covered, such as replying to texts, seeing notifications, making calls, and file transfer operations if you want to shift, say, a photo from your phone to the PC for image editing purposes.
As Windows Latest notes, the key strength of Intel Unison is a better implementation on the iOS side (indeed, it supported Apple smartphones from the off, when Microsoft’s take on this formula didn’t for some time). It’s also a more streamlined app, and well enough liked by those who use it – the review ratings for Unison on the Microsoft Store are currently higher than for Microsoft’s own solution.
At any rate, if you use Unison, you’ll have to ditch the app soon, so you might be looking at Phone Link in a couple of months’ time.
Windows Latest has spoken to sources and claims that while officially June 30 is the day on which Unison will be discontinued, it may continue to work okay on some devices for a little time afterwards – or at least some parts of the app might. Before long, though, it’s going to be fully turned off, so you might as well start getting used to that idea now.
Analysis: Disunification in progress
Intel Unison will have lasted two years (almost) when the app gets canned (Team Blue launched it back in August 2023). It’ll be a shame for some folks to see it go, as there are reports that it works more smoothly than Phone Link not just for iPhones, but for Android devices too – going by some of the online feedback for the app, anyway. (I haven’t used it myself).
If this is the first time you’re hearing about Intel Unison, then obviously, it’s a bit late to be learning about the app now. Although it’s not something I’d heard of previously, either, and Unison somehow flew under my radar – and I’m guessing that’s part of the problem, and reason why it’s been dropped. The other likely reason here is that as Windows Latest hints, it’s probably part of Intel’s cost-cutting measures, with Team Blue having to streamline its business considerably, as we saw with all the very unfortunate layoffs (and more) last year.
Compared to Intel Unison, the advantage of Phone Link is that it does offer more advanced functionality – particularly for Samsung smartphones, of course, but for all phones more broadly. And that includes the most recent step of integrating Phone Link directly in the Start menu, putting it front and center in the Windows 11 interface.
In short, Phone Link isn’t going anywhere, and Microsoft is surely going to bolster it going forwards – so it’s not likely that Unison would have kept up with this pace anyway. Still, for those who wanted a simple alternative, and a streamlined app that covered the basics – and by all accounts, covered them with some aplomb – Intel’s app fitted the bill, but obviously that won’t be the case for much longer.