NexPhone: All-In-One Smartphone, Tablet, Laptop, PC
Smartphone concept docks into a collection of devices to become a tablet, laptop or PC.
With smartphones becoming more and more powerful each year, today's top devices are powerful enough to perform most of the tasks needed for everyday life. Hardcore gamers aside, most smartphones are enough for the general public's internet browsing, email collecting and document viewing/editing needs.
For somebody who only performs smartphone-capable tasks with their PC or laptop, having a number of different devices can be costly and unnecessary. The NexPhone concept hopes to remedy that situation with a one size fits all solution that becomes whichever device you need it to be. The versatile device comes with a collection of options ranging from a simple dock that allows you to connect your own peripherals to a tablet dock, laptop dock or pc dock.
The device is currently just a concept seeking funds from crowd-funding site IndieGoGo, but it certainly isn't the first to come up with such an idea. Asus's Padfone offers similar solutions with its docks, but the NexPhone aims for a more complete package with a keyboard and trackpad built into its docks. For more renders and information on the device, head on over to the IndieGoGo page.
Smart phones are clearly getting to a point where they have the computing power for most everyday tasks. So docking them into a PC or Laptop shell could be interesting as long as the various docking hardware does not cost more or close to the device they are supposed to replace.
Even better would be a device that, instead of 'docking' to take over the use of a periphrial, would be to make the device bootable, so that my phone would have all of my data and applications, and be able to use the hardware (cpu, gpu, etc) of my laptop device, or my desktop device. The phone could be absolutely gutless, but with a big system drive/SSD, and let it leech the power of other devices instead. That is the phone or 'personal device' that I really want.
Can it run Crysis?
No?
I though so.
I suspect we may need to wait for Project Denver and ARM-64 before having the smartphone take over the PC. I favor Ubuntu as my desktop so it is not that far out for me in terms of OS.
However, the electronics will become relatively cheap, and they in fact are kind of cheap right now, a $200 tablet is very cheap specially if you see the price of electronics over the years accounting for inflation. So it is more likely you'll see an ARM chip thrown on any future media device instead of trying to turn your cell phone into multiple devices.
I really don't understand the point on this one,. "dock your phone on the nex laptop to get full computer experience",. seriously,. just buy a Windows 7 laptop or pick up those upcoming Windows 8 laptops and get touch-screen, touchpad and keyboard if you really dig the touch screen.
But to anyone that's read Science Fiction on any kind of regular basis - or, heck, even just watched enough Star Trek episodes - none of this is any real news until it happens. The ideas aren't new, they've been around for generations.
Where's my Dick Tracy watch?
Yet....Linux still can't seem to compete with Windows on the PC.... Until Linux is as user-friendly as Windows....it won't see anywhere near the adoption rate as Windows.
But seriously who gives a #@$% about these features or extra processing power if we can't even use our phones throughout the day. I know I don't. I'd be much more excited if Google came out and made a requirement for battery life on android devices...10 hours at least. Anything below that is just plain frustrating. Lately I've been going through 2 batteries a day on my galaxy 2, normal usage
Hmm... personally, I've found my battery life to be fine, and the Galaxy Nexus isn't exactly known to be good there. (that's the CDMA one though - I have the GSM version)
Also, the concept of a Ubuntu OS on a larger screen has already been done by a few Motorola phones with Android/Ubuntu being mixed.