Possibly, a few issues though:

Hardware is getting cheaper , for example the $25 raspberry pi computer. It will become likely that peripherals like the screen , case and keyboard will be more expensive than the actual computer itself (especially if the CPU etc are smartphone grade stuff).

If you have additional hardware inside your phone that is unlocked only when it is plugged into a docking station, then why are you carrying that extra hardware around in your pocket the whole time? Why not just put a very fast GPU inside the docking station for example and have some sort of high speed bus.

If you are making 2 versions of the same application with different UIs then that is really very similar to making 2 applications. Sure you can do a lot of code re-use, but this is possible anyway even when you are programming for separate devices.

Portable things like phones get easily lost of broken, imagine losing your smartphone and being basically unable to do anything until you replace it because there is no such thing as a "fat terminal" anymore.

Businesses are probably going to prefer bolted down systems (physically and in terms of software) that employees do not take home with them.

The internet makes this sort of a moot issue anyway, because if most of your applications are SaaS and all of your data is stored on a server anyway then anything with a web browser can become a dumb terminal, there is no need for your own hardware.

I don't think all applications will work cross dock.. Some sure, all no.

And in regards to housing the GPU inside dock, thats exactly what I was thinking. I believe you may have missed:

"Once docked, a smartphone can unlock additional cores that would otherwise consume too much power, activate a more powerful GPU, possibly one even housed in the docking station itself..."

I missed the part about the docking station and assumed you meant inside the phone, sorry.

Once you have put the GPU inside the docking station though, people will start to say "hmm, why not put a faster CPU in there too" "oh, and a bigger SSD so we can cache more stuff" at which point the phone starts to become redundant.

As with all of these things , I imagine it will be cyclical.

Sure,

I would think of the phone as your identity... your data, your apps, your storage... That's what makes the difference.

Further, I don't forsee all applications working cross dock.. Some sure, all no.

RE your earlier point on the workplace - The smartphone could always act as a key/SSO type device, and you can only access certain information when docked in a certain environment, within a VPN, etc.

Basically this thing becomes your identity.. if you lose it, yep you're SOL. Thank god for remote wipe? With hardware becoming cheaper as you say, and cloud storage, get a new one, sync and go on your way.

I agree with your point on redundancy until you want an ipod/camera/phone/mobile apps... You're already carrying it around... why not make laptops/desktops/tablets a hollow extension of the computer in your pocket?

I don't think it's about the hardware as much as the interactive storage, the effort that goes into maintaining your data, apps, life... the things iCloud and dropbox try to solve, and while they can still serve their purpose aren't quite right in terms of a truly portable lifestyle.

It really depends how much of storage/apps are moved to the cloud.

The way I imagine it evolving is more that the local storage on client side devices is used as a cache for commonly used files + code and the apps and files themselves live in the "cloud", so with a fast enough internet connection using a standalone device is indistinguishable from docking your phone. Now that cloud may be a generic cloud like dropbox/aws etc or it may be something specific that is hosted and run by the workplace.

The issue with having a completely dumb clamshell is that the screen and keyboard will be worth more than the computing hardware. Let's say the clamshell costs $250 without any brains but basic brains can be added for an extra $30 or so. There is actually a lot of utility in having independant brains on the laptop.

For example if I got out with my phone , I can give the laptop to someone else to use. Or what if I want to use my phone at the same time as I want to use the laptop? In this case you will be stretching the hardware to run 2 displays at once (with different apps, as well as having 2 complete UI systems loaded into memory) as well as the physical docking being an issue. For example what if I am talking on my phone and I want to walk to the other side of the room without dragging the laptop along or undocking it?

Having everything dependent on a small , easily lose able device is a biggie too. Replacing your phone is likely to be expensive (since it has a display etc) and essentially losing access to computing because you are too broke to replace your phone until your next payday is a big issue.

> For example if I got out with my phone , I can give the laptop to someone else to use.

That someone else has a smartphone, or will have one soon. Why would you want them to have a device with your data on it, and without their apps and their data, when they could otherwise just press a button and get up their desktop the exact way they left it.

> Or what if I want to use my phone at the same time as I want to use the laptop? In this case you will be stretching the hardware to run 2 displays at once (with different apps, as well as having 2 complete UI systems loaded into memory)

So what? Current generation phones can do that. Some Android devices can operate their main device and feed a 2160p display at the same time.

> as well as the physical docking being an issue. For example what if I am talking on my phone and I want to walk to the other side of the room without dragging the laptop along or undocking it?

Why? "Wireless HDMI" (in quotes because there's not yet a single standard) is here. Docking, via standard cables is optional, with the main benefit being charging, which you can do via micro-usb on my devices. I have about 10 micro-USB charging slots at home and 4 at work already, because it's trivially cheap and convenient.

I already walk upstairs while listening to music on my bluetooth headset and not bothering to bring my phone with me, or indeed because I'm charging it. Why would this change?

> Having everything dependent on a small , easily lose able device is a biggie too.

Why? We have cloud services and small, cheap NAS devices, don't we? So surely it's all sync'd and the only issue is the replacement cost.

> Replacing your phone is likely to be expensive (since it has a display etc) and essentially losing access to computing because you are too broke to replace your phone until your next payday is a big issue.

Those who can't afford a low level smartphone or tablet are not more likely to be able to afford it if you split it into a phone and an actual laptop.

As for being "expensive" that is of course subjective, but there are a tone of sub $100 Android devices out there that are already more than capable enough for a lot of users.

I see where you're coming from. I agree it definitely depends on how much moves to the cloud, could something like this have the potential to affect that? If pulled off correctly, I'd think so. I'm not convinced the cloud is the place for everything.

In terms of phone... bluetooth headset paired to docking station!

Yea losing the phone comes at quite a price, I agree. Personally, I'd pay for it.

C'mon, you can't pretend this thing wouldn't be bad ass if it was pulled off properly.

The lowest friction solution always has a big advantage. Under your solution I have to take a dumb laptop , a smartphone and a bluetooth headset with me everywhere and hook them all up together whenever I want to sit down and do something, bluetooth headsets are particularly cumbersome compared to putting a phone to your ear, not to mention that they make a lot of people feel dumb to wear.

A "cloud" solution that is fast and smooth enough will replicate the functionality of having one "mega device" without the drawbacks.

I actually think that the cloud will become the place for everything for a conceptual point of view. If you are concerned about privacy etc it will be possible to run your own personal cloud out of a tiny PC in the corner of your home.

Some concessions will have to be made for offline use of course (which I guess will become increasingly rare). Really though it makes more sense to think of your devices as an extension of your "cloud" rather than the other way around.

And why wouldn't you have to bring that hardware with you now, or with the cloud? What happens when you have no connectivity?

The cloud solution doesn't reduce the hardware requirement. This isn't even necessarily about reducing the hardware requirement.

If you need to run your own PC you now need the bandwidth, an additional PC sitting in your home, know how, etc...

The phone solution isn't increasing what you'd need to bring, it will situationally decrease the requirement, though, but that's not even the point. You don't necessarily need a bluetooth headset. Use headphones, speaker, or something. A simple microphone and headphone requirement isn't going to break the concept, it's really beside the point. Set up is a non issue, plug and play. Slide the damn thing into a dock built into the device.

The point is all your data in current state comes with you, apps and all. You can go to public terminals and it's all instantly there, you have the mobile experience, it's all familiar, it's always with you. I think cloud storage is complimentary here, not an alternative solution.

This can, however, situationally reduce your hardware requirement when traveling if your destination is outfitted with dummy terminals, and you get the benefit of local storage, which I'm not convinced cloud will be able to 100% replace for quite some time, if ever.

Don't forget you won't require internet access or any other limiting conditions, which may be the strongest advantage.

Our smartphones aren't going anywhere, they're more accessible than the cloud and they're increasingly attached to our side. I just don't see the cloud as an alternative, it's all about the use case here.

I'd rather have one device.

I think that in theory people prefer to have one device , but in practice people are quite happy to have a house with lots of computers in it, after all space isn't a premium and it's nice to always have something near to hand.

Even amongst non tech people I know , most of them will have something like 1 Desktop PC , 2 Laptops , 1 Tablet , 2 Games consoles and 2 smartphones laying around the house. They could probably condense these substantially but they don't seem to see any need to.

I wouldn't agree that a requiring a headset would be "besides the point", I think being able to instantly grab your phone and stick it to your ear when you get an important call through is an important use case (after all it is a phone) and one that more than justifies the small extra expense of having a cheap CPU etc inside a laptop case.

Regards Local vs Cloud storage, there is no reason that this couldn't be transparent. For example , if you go somewhere and login to a public terminal it could detect that your phone is close by and offer you the option to transfer the state (if it is more up to date than the cloud copy) from the phone to the terminal via wifi.

Of course docking the phone into a laptop and using the laptop display/input to control the phone could be a possibility , I just don't see it as such a compelling usecase that you would see large sales of dumb laptops.

For example laptop docking stations have been around for a while and allow you to turn your laptop into essentially a desktop PC, negating the need for a desktop PC. However I don't know anybody who actually uses one very often in the real world. It's simply too cheap to just buy an extra PC and use Dropbox + IMAP Email to handle most of the important "state" for you. An ex boss of mine bought one, but replaced it with a separate desktop about a month later for example.

I suppose time will tell, but I would imagine that we will get to the point where just about everything in your home will have a reasonably fast CPU inside it (possibly 1Ghz+ devices even given away as part of a novelty toy in the bottom of a cereal box at some point) and the valuable parts are the Human Interface devices & software/data rather than the computers themselves.

> I think that in theory people prefer to have one device , but in practice people are quite happy to have a house with lots of computers in it, after all space isn't a premium and it's nice to always have something near to hand.

This isn't about the number of devices people have. Or in a way it is, because having instant access to your data and state of computation "everywhere" makes having more cheap devices floating around even more attractive. Currently every extra device is a device that might hold data that is not accessible everywhere else, and that might result in data loss, and that need to be "managed" if only in the sense of knowing what you can do which things with or which one has those embarrassing photos and hence shouldn't be lent to grandma.

If they are mostly dumb shells (I'll grant you that having a $25 of computation capability or so built in as "backup" might be useful) and they are just appliances or furniture.

> Regards Local vs Cloud storage, there is no reason that this couldn't be transparent. For example , if you go somewhere and login to a public terminal it could detect that your phone is close by and offer you the option to transfer the state (if it is more up to date than the cloud copy) from the phone to the terminal via wifi.

Latency and bandwidth are killers here, and latency in particular is subject to nasty physical limitations. Yes, it can be more transparent. But network bandwidth and latency are both increasing very slowly. My mobile internet is still only about 1.5Mbps. My home broadband is 8Mbps. If I'm lucky I can upgrade to 66Mbps down next month. My wireless is 300Mbps. My wired network is 1Gbps. I have SSD's at work that easily does 5Gbps, and my home laptop's SSD can do at least 2Gbps. I'd turn it upside down: For personal usage, cloud storage, apart as for backup and sharing with others, is a workaround for the deficiencies that currently force us to use a variety of devices. It becomes less relevant as functionality converges and shortens that gap for everything but "overflow" as storage becomes cheap enough and easy enough that having it elsewhere becomes pointless other than as a backup.

> I wouldn't agree that a requiring a headset would be "besides the point", I think being able to instantly grab your phone and stick it to your ear when you get an important call through is an important use case (after all it is a phone) and one that more than justifies the small extra expense of having a cheap CPU etc inside a laptop case.

And how would it being a computer stop you from doing that?

> For example laptop docking stations have been around for a while and allow you to turn your laptop into essentially a desktop PC, negating the need for a desktop PC. However I don't know anybody who actually uses one very often in the real world. It's simply too cheap to just buy an extra PC and use Dropbox + IMAP Email to handle most of the important "state" for you. An ex boss of mine bought one, but replaced it with a separate desktop about a month later for example.

They are frequently used in businesses. But today they are less relevant because the trend is instead to buy "desktop replacement" notebooks. Desktop sales are stagnating to dropping. There will be more smart phones sold this years than PC's in total, and desktops will be a dropping proportion of that minority market. People opt for laptops instead of desktops, not in addition to them, because they are now powerful "enough" and the mobility, even if it's only sufficient to move it between rooms, is valuable.

The driving force here is that the phone does need to be capable of being an independent computing unit, so that tends to force things onto the phone. A new GPU and CPU etc may be nice, but for most people won't be necessary, and I suspect your average clamshell simply won't have it. I think the general case will be dumb clamshell with nothing but peripherals, USB ports, and a battery. The alternative is significantly more expensive, yet brings the average user no benefit. (Possibly negative if its less reliable.)

A clamshell that does have everything in it will simply be a laptop, and laptops will continue to outclass phones in raw performance for a good long time. (The presence of additional, usable volume will continue to be an advantage for a good long time yet, and by volume I mean literally three-dimensional space.)

I don't think it would be much more expensive, considering the raspberry pi project managed to make a complete computer for $25.

I guess we will see both options and the market will sort it out, it's basically a case between having one "do it all" system vs 2 specialized systems.

Historically though, things such as laptop docking stations and laptops with detachable tablets have never really taken off and I imagine this could be a case of the same.

But the point is if you're ok with a Rasperry Pi class computer, why not just put it in the phone? And indeed, the Pi is outclassed in performance by pretty much every Android device in existence.

You're already carrying your phone with you. There might be some value in a "shell" with a Raspberry Pi level computer in it, but in that case I think you'd see the opposite happen to what you're suggesting: The shell using the phone for additional computer power when present, and the Pi class computer simply being a way of offering very basic dumb terminal capabilities when no superior computing device is present.

> Historically though, things such as laptop docking stations and laptops with detachable tablets have never really taken off and I imagine this could be a case of the same.

Historically, laptop docking stations were a big deal for businesses, and "laptops with detachable tablets" are where the tablets were/are actually usable is a very new thing. I don't think you can draw any conclusions from that.

When consumers are aggressively searching for the lowest price, and in general lack the sophistication to tell what the performance is, you generally end up in a situation where even a buck or two can be the difference between a product that sells and doesn't. Sometimes the sophisticated option can be squeezed right out when the masses can't tell the difference... ask me how I feel about the inability to buy anything but TFT screens in a laptop sometime.

That is true, people often have crappy taste when it comes to quality (or just low budgets). However I think there is a big difference between buying "a laptop" and "a laptop that doesn't do anything unless you plug a phone into it".

Look at the iPad.

Tablets never took off before Apple did it right, with a similar look and feel as other apple products.

It's all about the experience.

To me, the phones primary purpose in this scenario is to maintain state.

I can be working at home and instantly sleep my "phone-computer", slip it in my pocket and then resume right where I left off when I arrive at work by re-docking it.

Exactly! Even now I'm annoyed that I have to type on my iPhone keyboard when I'm sitting at my computer and someone sends me a text. Would infinitely prefer that when I'm in proximity of my computer and logged in that the phone functionality was available in the computer's OS and on screen.

And then being able to get up and carry what I was doing on my computer wherever I go would be the next step.

Wouldn't it be simple enough to write an app for your phone that would check if it was connected to your "home" wifi and then upload incoming sms messages to your desktop/laptop.

The phone app could wait for you to type a reply on your PC which is then sent back to the phone and then the phone would send it.

I'd be amazed if something like this does not exist.

AirDroid is a pretty good start: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sand.airdr.... It lets you manage most of the phone functionality from your desktop.

But that only solves a narrow sliver of what he wanted.

You got it.

And enjoy some media / regular mobile experience in the interim.

> If you have additional hardware inside your phone that is unlocked only when it is plugged into a docking station, then why are you carrying that extra hardware around in your pocket the whole time? Why not just put a very fast GPU inside the docking station for example and have some sort of high speed bus.

Why are you assuming only? Only when it's charging, perhaps. Or only when you're using something heavy duty enough to benefit.

There are already 5 core Android devices out there with 4 fast cores and one slow, low clocked, low power core, that can step all the way fro using 4 fast cores to only the low power core when there's no demand for it.

That give you the flexibility to wireless stream (there are devices with "wireless HDMI" support around already) a complex UI to the flat screen in your living room, or the laptop shell, or just play a demanding 3D game on the go, and suck battery accordingly, or switch it all off.

Why would you want to pay for multiple extra CPU's and GPU's to avoid carrying around something smaller and lighter than a stamp, when your phone would need a decent CPU and GPU anyway?

> Portable things like phones get easily lost of broken, imagine losing your smartphone and being basically unable to do anything until you replace it because there is no such thing as a "fat terminal" anymore.

I didn't see him claim there would be no such thing, just that smart phones and "dumb" companions would be "the future" in the sense that it's what most people use. And as you've pointed out: Low end hardware is cheap. If we get to this world, there's no reason you wouldn't be able to pick up a basic pocket computer / smartphone in your local corner shop for a tenner as a temporary measure - the cheapest android tablets are already pushing their way down towards the low double digits.

> Businesses are probably going to prefer bolted down systems (physically and in terms of software) that employees do not take home with them.

I'm sure some do, but in the last 10 years, I've never worked anywhere where they cared. Of course there'll be a market for other solutions too for those that do care, but I think you'll see things converge. Few places buy big desktops any more. They are shrinking. They will shrink further.. The main thing here is that we're moving towards a situation where mobility or not is decided by policy and need rather than practicality of actually moving the hardware and whether it's designed as a phone or intended for more permanent infrastructure.

> The internet makes this sort of a moot issue anyway, because if most of your applications are SaaS and all of your data is stored on a server anyway then anything with a web browser can become a dumb terminal, there is no need for your own hardware.

There are several problems with this:

1) We are very far away from universal connectivity. I commute through densely populated parts of London, and yet I lose my internet connection several times during the journey. Never mind more remote locations. When computing power is getting as cheap as it is, it becomes pointless to rely only on dumb terminals.

2) Latency. For some things it doesn't matter, but for lots it does. Try going on vacation to China if your data is stored in Europe, and if you're "lucky" enjoy the extra latency of your data going through the US. We're far from a situation where our networks are even remotely as good as they can get, but even if they were, there's that pesky issue of the speed of light, which actually will matter if you travel. Won't affect everyone, but it does mean we can't go al dumb terminal.

3) The emotional need for control of data whether the reasons are sound or not. Personally, I'm clawing my data back: I sign up only for services where I can backup my data to my personal server, because I've seen enough seemingly stable companies fail, or change in ways detrimental to their users.

4) People want access on the go. So we will already be carrying at least one device with us. If computing power is cheap, there's no reason to not make use of it to solve the above three issues. And conversely: Cloud services make it cheaper. If I was to dispense with my laptop, I'd need my phone to have about a TB of storage. If I am to dispense with my home server, it needs about 6TB of storage. And that is now, when my movie collection doesn't have a single Blu Ray in it, never mind 2160p 3D movies. But if I can put a small NAS in the corner and/or sign up with a cloud service, it only needs to store enough for those times when connectivity isn't great, so the threshold where I can make my phone my primary computer is significantly lowered.

Apple's newfound fortune was built on the understanding that mobile computing is fundamentally different than desktop/laptop computing. That understanding is the reason they were able to break touch screen interfaces into the mainstream.

Steve Jobs is laughing in his grave at stuff like this.

Form factor is just the topping. Using web apps and cloud storage is so far the most accessible way to have a seamless computing environment (versus experience, which must be different like Jobs knew). Apple or anyone else could side step those entire industries by making powerful portable smart phones that acted as a driver or data storage for other operating environments.

Yes. This is exactly how I feel. Let the phone drive the data/storage. The dock/mode/inputs are all situational.

Mobile will still be a mobile experience, desktop a desktop, the phone can even slide into a damn tablet...

But the same mobile device is the little chip inside the cyborg.

None of that solves the problem of being vulnerable to issues in the cloud, though. There are about 10 billion things that have to work correctly for your data to be accessible and safe and only 1 or 2 things that have to go wrong for it to be gone forever.

Which is true for local storage as well. If fact, I will argue that data on cloud is more reliable than data on my local machine. I carry it all the time, I don't have back up for a large part of it (I use versioning for code, everything else is painful); I did have some backups on external storage devices but they are more prone to faults and crashes than my internal drives. Carrying such devices around is a major hassle - actively taking backups is an even bigger task!

I'm not suggesting they need to be fundamentally the same.

Apple has taken steps to give iOS and OSx some key similarities in look and feel, the lines don't need to be blurred any further, in fact for this concept to be successful, I don't think they should.

People are taking you awfully literally here. I think the idea of only having to ever configure and trust 1 device is fantastic.

I guess people are thinking of the integration that is available today and how awkward it is, rather than the integration that can happen when everything ships with support for working with everything else.

Sure the software needed at the center of it doesn't exist, but there isn't any fundamental limitation on presenting device appropriate interfaces, it's just integration work.

I'd have to agree.

I really don't believe a company like Apple would be more than five years away from being able to do something like this, either... Provided they wanted to, of course.

It still may be too soon, and I'm certainly not thinking the device in the linked article is the solution, but there are a lot of possibilities here.

I agree.

It won't just be what you do in the office either. Modularity like this would help speed up iterations in car nav technology. (Why should GPS units be so tightly coupled with the display tech? Why did it take several years after the first iphone before we saw multi-touch GPSs? Shouldn't I be able to upgrade the voice command module in an older-generation car?)

I like what Peter F. Hamilton imagined in his Commonwealth Saga. Your personal computer expands out to available resources as you move from place to place.

I used to think that but now I think it will be delivered via the cloud. Integrating software is much easier than integrating hardware.

The "cloud" is still ultimately hardware. And it'd be much nicer if a good chunk of that hardware is light enough to be carried around in my pocket so I don't have to deal with network outages or latency issues, and instead have it form it's own little mini-cloud with nearby devices combined with synchronizing to more remote large scale cloud services to safe keep my data.

That's already sort of here: My data exists with external providers but is nearly all backed up to my home server, which serves my set top box, and serves as a backup point for my phone and laptop (before shuffling the data on to external backup), and my phone can tell my home server to push a movie to my TV via my set top box using DLNA, or my laptop can push it to my phone. Or my phone to my TV. Or any of them can pull it straight from the file server.

No "hardware integration" necessary other than the networking and power supply.

Ubuntu for Android does this.

"I really think smart phones will become the magical little chip you place inside a cyborg to operate a larger, more powerful creature."

Why though? To save the screen having a processor behind it?