<story><title>Device turns Android phone into computer. A reason to make HTML 5 apps?</title><url>http://clamcase.com/clambook-android-and-iphone-laptop-dock.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Casc</author><text>Getting closer...&lt;p&gt;I really think a smartphone docking into stations is the future.  &quot;Mannequin&quot; Laptops, desktops etc that are activated once a smartphone is plugged in.  You can now use a keyboard, external monitors, your OS slightly adapts... iOS becomes Snow Leopard (not exactly, you just have more functionality)&lt;p&gt;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...&lt;p&gt;I really think smart phones will become the magical little chip you place inside a cyborg to operate a larger, more powerful creature.&lt;p&gt;Imagine working at home off your docked smartphone computer (fully functioning OS), undocking and using your simple apps on the train to work (mobile OS, not much different than current experience), getting to work, docking into your station and you&apos;re right back at it (full OS)... portability with a familiar ui/ux feel... seamless experience.&lt;p&gt;Or gaming at home, undocking and going to a LAN party with your friends, not having to worry about whether or not the games / apps are installed, the docks are generic... plug and play.&lt;p&gt;(Ignoring the whole home to work aspect and security issues / work policies, of course)&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3902051&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3902051&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jiggy2011</author><text>Possibly, a few issues though:&lt;p&gt;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).&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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 &quot;fat terminal&quot; anymore.&lt;p&gt;Businesses are probably going to prefer bolted down systems (physically and in terms of software) that employees do not take home with them.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></comment>
<story><title>Device turns Android phone into computer. A reason to make HTML 5 apps?</title><url>http://clamcase.com/clambook-android-and-iphone-laptop-dock.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Casc</author><text>Getting closer...&lt;p&gt;I really think a smartphone docking into stations is the future.  &quot;Mannequin&quot; Laptops, desktops etc that are activated once a smartphone is plugged in.  You can now use a keyboard, external monitors, your OS slightly adapts... iOS becomes Snow Leopard (not exactly, you just have more functionality)&lt;p&gt;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...&lt;p&gt;I really think smart phones will become the magical little chip you place inside a cyborg to operate a larger, more powerful creature.&lt;p&gt;Imagine working at home off your docked smartphone computer (fully functioning OS), undocking and using your simple apps on the train to work (mobile OS, not much different than current experience), getting to work, docking into your station and you&apos;re right back at it (full OS)... portability with a familiar ui/ux feel... seamless experience.&lt;p&gt;Or gaming at home, undocking and going to a LAN party with your friends, not having to worry about whether or not the games / apps are installed, the docks are generic... plug and play.&lt;p&gt;(Ignoring the whole home to work aspect and security issues / work policies, of course)&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3902051&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3902051&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cageface</author><text>Apple&apos;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.&lt;p&gt;Steve Jobs is laughing in his grave at stuff like this.</text></comment>