For example, university students whose main use for a computer is editing documents could comfortably get by with nothing but a nice-ish phone, a monitor, and a Bluetooth KB+mouse.
also, FYI (and for the sake of non-native English readers), it's "unrealistic". ["irrealistic" relates to irrealism, a literary technique that departs from reality]
if it came out today with say 16gb of RAM and used the new Android VM feature I would buy it instantly
It could have been a decent concept if the Tegra 3 chipset wasn’t a little underpowered and the onboard storage so slow.
On new stuff, a Bluetoothu keyboard and mouse more or less solve input, and USB-C should solve video out (and input if you want). Modern phones should be powerful enough for basic desktop use, I just don’t think people want it.
You just described Librem 5.
The StarLabs tablet would be much better suited here, but it’s also 12.5” which is so large that you may as well just get a laptop with more power and better battery life.
I do most of my light/routine server management via SSH from my phone, plus keeping a version control checkout of my documents that I do actually work on in vim (yes, the limited keyboard is annoying but it's fine for light work). At a previous job, the former extended quite far; I could get paged in the middle of the night, connect to the VPN, SSH into the server, triage, and frequently diagnose and even fix the problem without having to actually get out of bed.
...A smartphone, yes.
> especially since doing work-related stuff on your personal smartphone seems dangerous
It was my work phone, not my personal phone.
As compared to your personal laptop? Or is the 'personal' qualifier that makes you say that?
Controlled BGP enabled switches too.
Fixed database replication issues.
They're more powerful than plenty of computers from not too long ago