Dan Gillmor's got an interesting column looking at an idea I've raised before. Could the smartphone end up becoming the replacement for the laptop computer? My own question took it a little further: could the smartphone become our basic computer? Here's Dan:
Which is why I'm intrigued, to say the least, at the news that Ubuntu, creator of a popular version of the Linux operating system, is planning to turn newer Android smartphones into the brains and storage of a desktop-capable machine. An Ubuntu-equipped phone would plug into a dock connected to a keyboard and monitor, and the result would be a desktop computer of genuine value.
Given the way my working life pans out I would indeed love to have a single basic computer which I then plug into accessories when I get to places. We're certainly not that far away from the processors in smartphones being able to handle all of the tasks that I myself use a computer for. But there are three major problems which have been true of all of the various attempts from PDAs onwards to produce just such a one stop machine. Size of display, size of keyboard and battery life.
Without decent sized versions of all of these then a computer in a smartphone is really just a convenient way of transporting your computer (something which as above I would be happy with) but it's not a method of providing you with a usable computer while on the move. Sure, we could have display, keyboard and power supply available at home, the office, in a hotel room, whatever. Plug in and away you go. But barring some radical developments (which Gillmor muses on) we've not so solved the problem of mobile computing, just of mobile computers.
Maybe those Google glasses, voice input and better batteries will solve it all but as I've said before, I don't think we're quite there yet.
