Device turns Android phone into computer. A reason to make HTML 5 apps?
clamcase.com
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I really think a smartphone docking into stations is the future. "Mannequin" 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)
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 really think smart phones will become the magical little chip you place inside a cyborg to operate a larger, more powerful creature.
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're right back at it (full OS)... portability with a familiar ui/ux feel... seamless experience.
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.
(Ignoring the whole home to work aspect and security issues / work policies, of course)
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.
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..."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
And then being able to get up and carry what I was doing on my computer wherever I go would be the next step.
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.
And enjoy some media / regular mobile experience in the interim.
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.
Steve Jobs is laughing in his grave at stuff like this.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Why though? To save the screen having a processor behind it?
Also, I don't really think this is a good idea. Phones have different power and thermal envelopes, so even with Moore's Law, dedicated desktop is always going to be more powerful than laptop, and laptop is going to be more powerful than this. Same goes for storage, memory, graphics and everything.
And one more thing, after playing one of the games in lastest Humble Bundle that was originally released for iOS, I am of the opinion that touch and mouse/trackpad interfaces are incompatible in both ways, that using mouse or trackpad with touch apps is as impractical as using touch interface with traditional desktop apps.
Also would your brother want to dock/undock his phone with his laptop all the time? I generally just leave my phone in my jacket pocket most of the time so if I want to go out of the door I don't have to hunt it down. Under this system your going to have to go find your laptop and unplug it before you can leave.
Under this logic it would have made sense for Apple to launch the iPad as simply a "big screen" dock for the iPhone. Instead they launched it as a separate device with faster hardware.
I predict that tablets will start to become far more powerful than smartphones in the long run as demand for high end graphics will increase whereas smartphones will become more optimized to reduce power usage.
If things were working correctly, there wouldn't be any need to take your phone out of your pocket to have it drive the laptop.
And the laptop needn't be useless if the phone isn't around, it should just be able to advertise its screen and keyboard to the phone, so that a user that wants to push text at the phone can use the laptop to do it (without messing around with much of anything).
I agree, but I think it's a matter of what's acceptably powerful enough. At the risk of holding up anecdotes as data, I know some people who pretty much just use their phones and iPads (v2); maybe we've hit a point where these devices are powerful enough for a non-trivial segment of the market?
The only thing I see even remotely challenging to these devices is the fact that laying out a web page is a legitimately complicated algorithm, which we've secretly been pouring more and more processing power into over the years. Other than that these things have more than enough power for anything most people want today. There's a class of applications coming in the augmented reality domain and such that people will want more power for tomorrow, but they can buy that power tomorrow at tomorrow's price's.
Actually if you think about it, its not really a marketing gem, when compared to what Apple does for its technically inferior Mac book Air line-ups. (Hint: Google for Mac vs Pc on Youtube)
Yes. Statistics is the collection and analysis of numerical data. Science is nothing without statistics.
Don't you believe in statistics?
I know the HN community is diverse and getting more so, but this is a surprising question here nonetheless.
Have a nice day.
The UK price for the same iPad is £399. Yes there is a discrepancy, but you're not being ripped off as much as you think you are.
Unless you buy an Apple TV, that is.
this makes a lot more sense now..
Also, in the fine print at the bottom:
"The images on this website are examples only. Actual products may not contain the same design or functionality as featured on this website. "
This seems to work more like Asus' Padfone, so when the phone is docked, you get ICS on the larger screen, and get to use all Android apps.
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/02/ubuntu-for-android-announ...
The fact that they run in a special window suggests that the applications actually run in Android, but that they are composited in/on the Linux desktop.
Isn't it ironic how just a few hours after somebody posted the wikipedia article on Betteridge's Law of Headlines (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4092880), two of such headlines make the top 2 of HN :)
More on topic, this looks like Palm Foleo re-invented (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Foleo). I always found the Foleo concept great so I wouldn't mind seeing another attempt. That said, the success of iPad and other tablets is going to make this device even more niche than the Foleo would have been. It'll be a tough sell.
You are probably right - but not necessarily. This, after all, fills a different niche to a tablet. You can't put a tablet in your pocket and tablets are expensive because of having their own processor, memory, etc. This way you can use all the facilities of your highly portable phone on a laptop sized device that should, in theory, be a lot cheaper than a laptop or tablet.
http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/New-iPad-32-GB-4...
Devices like this still have a screen and battery and mechanicals. Instead of $20 of CPU and $10 of RAM they have a $10 CPU that includes RAM. That's pretty much the only savings available.
On the other hand, tablets sell in huge volumes; this is a niche market. So it's quite probable that tablets and/or notebooks without a CPU will be more expensive than ones with a CPU.
What's interesting here isn't the actual hardware (which either doesn't exist or is cheap crap), it's the concept.
I don't support IP whatsoever; I'm vehemently against all these laws. I'm just curious how they're planning to get away with it.
Now look at me. Now look at the clambook pictures. See how it prominently says "clambook" when it's open, and prominently shows the clambook logo on the back? I suspect that it would be hard to find a meaningful group of people who would answer the question "who made this" with "Apple." If you know enough to associate that design with Apple, you know it's not going to have a picture of a mollusk where the Apple logo's supposed to be. No customer confusion == no trade dress problem. (This isn't a hypothetical -- they literally do this kind of survey in trademark cases.)
Incidentally, not all IP law is the same, and trademark/trade dress law in particular is a Good Thing. You don't want to buy a knockoff Apple power charger thinking you're getting the real thing. You don't want to pay French champagne prices for California bubbly, or Coke prices for store-brand soda. The basic question in trademark law is "how often does this product succeed in tricking someone into buying one thing when they meant to buy something else?" Obviously courts will get the answer wrong sometimes, and there might be areas where the line should be drawn a little differently, but for the most part this is an area of IP law you should vehemently support.
I'm on a horse.
I'm also on the lookout for a Windows alternative in the future, as I'm not liking the direction Microsoft is taking with Metro at all. But Google needs to become a lot more serious about tablet (and desktop) apps by then. So far I've not seen that, but maybe things will change when they launch their own Android tablet at I/O, unless they will keep pretending phone apps are good enough for larger screens.
http://www.motorola.com/us/consumers/Motorola-Lapdock-100/73...
The clam case is much sexier.
But, even at $250, I can't find a compelling reason to use my phone in laptop environment. The apps just aren't there.
Also, $250 gets you a fully funtional (and more powerful) Windows/Linux laptop. Spend some more and you get a machine you can write code on and game with.
I wish them all the best, but this is going to tank.
It's funny that now every laptop is looking like Apple's MacBook Air.
For 90%+ of computer users on Earth, it's way better than a laptop.
This smells like the future.
We have a computer in our pockets, a seperate tablet and then an actual laptop. Thats a computer 3x just packaged differently.
Can't wait to see where this and similar products go.
> MHL Technology simultaneously delivers digital video to ClamBook and power to your Smartphone
> Standard Laptops can run uncomfortably hot in your lap. ClamBook's processing happens on your Smartphone, so it runs cool as cucumber.
> With MHL® technology, your smartphone charges while it’s connected to ClamBook.
> ClamBook's slim and sleek aluminum design features a widescreen display, full-sized keyboard and multi-touch trackpad. Add style and functionality while transforming your Smartphone into the ultimate connected device.
> Impossibly thin, Incredibly light
Apparently it has speakers too.
In short, it is an "empty"/"braindead" laptop that uses your phone's processing and storage capabilities to function.
The only advantage I see of this model over the existing cloud model is possibly cost, as presumably the device is much cheaper than a laptop.
But that comes with a UX price tag - as already pointed out here, app interfaces built for touch can be frustrating to operate with a mouse/trackpad cursor.
If they can pull off an attractive price point AND an elegant solution to the UX problem, this could be a serious sales machine.
And by your logic, the iPad was destined for failure too, no?
I'm not sure if this will fly, but I suspect execution and design will be major factors.
Today I bought 2 more HTML 5 books, and I am trying to take breaks from consulting to master HTML 5 based apps. Something is wrong in the world if HTML 5 apps don't replace a majority of platform specific apps because in is in just about everyone's interest to have a portable UI platform across devices.
"Google Turns Android Into A Computer"
I almost suspect that the chromebook project is down Google's attempt to make a new kind of laptop.
That would be pretty cool?
"Some of the ClamBook features highlighted may use modified software. It is important to note, most manufacturers strongly caution against installing any software that modifies the original device software (this process is often referred to as “jailbreaking” or “rooting”)."
There are iOS AirPlay APIs for video mirroring on later devices[1] (you can even have different content on the external screen and phone's screen), though I'm not sure how they'd manage to connect a keyboard or trackpad.
This strikes me as more of a design mockup than a viable product. The company does have existing products[2] but they're not nearly as polished.
[1]http://www.apple.com/airplay/ [2]http://clamcase.com/ipad-3-keyboard-case-black.html
I'm not so sure about the touchpad though.
Still I find that page a little bogus.
The reason to make HTML5 apps is that they'll run on anything with a modern browser. Some applications are related to the underlying device hardware and need to be written in the appropriate SDK, but many programs could be done just as well in HTML5 and would be inherently cross-platform.
The thing about netbooks is that everything from the OS itself to the applications written for Windows were made with powerful processors in mind, and as processors became more powerful, those apps became more resource intensive as well. Then you took all that and crammed it into a very low-performance netbook.
Mobile operating systems and apps were designed from the ground up to use very little resources and be lean so they don't use a lot of battery life, either. So yeah, the comparison is not the same. The most "advanced" app on a dual core tablet will probably feel just as fast as the "most advanced" program on a high-end PC, if not faster.
I remember it seemed really cool, but in practice it was a pain in the ass.
Oh wait it's Palm Foleo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Foleo) all over again
It's much closer to the Motorola Atrix laptop dock.
In other words: Your phone will catch up to where it is fast enough for enough uses for enough people that there will be a substantial market for taking advantage of the enhanced mobility and flexibility.
Power users will still want more, but power users are a small niche.
About the idea - it's kinda neat but I think it's 2-3 years too early. Graphics, ram and networking are ok in today's smartphones and may be able to power a netbook - the CPU however isn't. As an example, HD flash videos is something today's users expect in an ultrabook sized device and this will disappoint them. And if this is thought to be an additional device to your notebook then I have to ask - why? You're still much better off with an ARM tablet and a keyboard dock.
There are Android phones out there that can display video at 2160p to an external display, so I'm not sure why this should be a problem.
But I really don't think people who want to play flash videos are the target market for this device today.
Rather people like me for whom having a netbook for very basic stuff is very useful, but who really have no need for it to be an extra computer.
I have everything I need in order to manage the servers I'm responsible for on my phone, for example, but I'm hampered by a small screen, no keyboard (ssh via on screen keyboard on my 4.3" phone is somewhat painful) and short battery life, so today I already carry around spare batteries and a large battery pack in my back, and really should have a keyboard with me too. That still leaves the screen. And cables. Getting it all in one sleek case would be great.
> And if this is thought to be an additional device to your notebook then I have to ask - why? You're still much better off with an ARM tablet and a keyboard dock.
My laptop is a 17.3" "desktop replacement" that never leaves the house. I don't usually need a laptop when I'm out and about, but as mentioned above there are cases where some limited capabilities beyond what my phone offers would be great.
You're right that a tablet + keyboard could meet it, but I'd prefer a 7" tablet I can easily hold in one hand during commuting, while I'd prefer a larger screen if I need to have extra stuff to be able to do work anyway.
There's room for a lot of different form factors and types of devices - people have different usage patterns.
And concerning a target market: Yes it might be useful for some audiences like sysadmins or people who don't really want to consume media on their computers. I still think that most people who want to use devices like these want to be able to watch videos. Even on iPads the lack of flash is what has been most limiting to many people - luckily the situation gets increasingly better with the adoption of iOS native formats. I guess we have to see.
How is software decoding remotely relevant? Doing that when almost all modern phones and tablets have GPU's that supports accelerated decoding of the formats that actually get used on the web would be entirely pointless.
> I still think that most people who want to use devices like these want to be able to watch videos.
And they will be, given that pretty much even the cheapest Chinese Android devices around have hardware accelerated video decoding for the common formats. In fact, the most common chipset in the cheapest of the cheap Android devices these days tend to have the ARM Mali GPU architecture largely for this purpose.
If I wanted a large tablet, then yes, I agree with you, just adding a keyboard to that would be just as good a solution.
"With MHL® technology, your smartphone charges while it’s connected to ClamBook. Enjoy full length movies, edit documents, and browse the web without worrying about draining your battery."
So clearly there's a battery in it.
It's a nice idea and I could use it to replace most of my desktop functionality - but then I sometimes have to burn a few DVDs, run some in-house developed apps, read/write USB sticks and use a (USB) Yubikey (OTP generator) to access some of our systems so it would be very hard to switch 100% to a ClamBook, and there's no way I'd want to keep alternating between two sets of kit - kinda defeats the purpose - but some may be able to cope.
It's a great vision, if someone could just standardize on a docking mechanism.
If we have removed the technological restrictions that tied us to that form factor, are there not better ways to modularise this kind of functionality than to just make a dumb terminal in the shape of a laptop.
For this kind of product, if the keyboard can't unclip from the screen, then you are doing it wrong.
Not that they're doing it right either. I don't want to have to carry around a dongle in addition to a fake laptop. Better to sync my data to the cloud securely and have my device of choice (for actual work) automatically pull down the relevant data.
I agree. Tablets are ergonomically stupid as well. Don't even get me started on the general problem of having your fingers blocking what you are trying to see, let alone the lack of any kind of nice tactile feedback. The current minimalist design principles for personal computing devices are mirroring the worst of the architectural ones. Clean, sleek, beautiful, refined, and fairly useless for most people.
Today's computing devices are fragile toys that look the part, and do more things, but are functionally worse at doing the tasks of the objects they are supposed to replace. The fact is I am very close to binning my smart phone and finding an old nokia 3210, purely because I could use that without looking at it most of the time, it was much quicker to make a call, it crashed a lot less, booted up quicker and the batteries lasted longer.