Mobile Phone as PC
Philip Greenspun makes a very interesting post Mobile Phone As Home Computer. Analyzing my own computing habits lately, I have been craving for some such device. I have a slightly different variation, which simplifies the design.
In my ideal cell phone computer, Wi-Fi will be built-in to the phone for network connectivity. It will also have a USB/Bluetooth based interface, so it can connect to and external display/keyboard/mouse which I will call “the display device”. USB can also double up as a charger.
The display device will be ubiquitous, and will go for under $100 in volume. We can imagine this everywhere, homes, offices, Starbucks, … Whereever there is Wi-Fi, these devices will be present. Just plug-in the cell phone to the USB port, and start computing. The entire work, including the network part, is done in the cell phone. Only the user interface is outside. This dramatically reduces security concerns. Secure networking is upto the software in the phone; so if it has a VPN tunnel (Google Wifi!), unencrypted Wi-Fi links are OK.
The cell phone will come with 4-8 GB of local storage, a state-of-the-art, full-powered browser, and the usual utilities. Everything else can be supplied by the web.
No point complicating the cell phone by trying to squeeze in keyboard and display. It will never satisfy a real computer need. Instead, a cellphone + display device combination can work. If the interface to it is standardized through USB/Bluetooth, they can become ubiquitous in fairly short order.
I hope Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and others are listening!