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Comment by drcode | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone really still want a phone you can plug into a monitor? This would have been a dream product back before broadband and wifi became ubiquitous, and before extra PCs became so cheap.

Nowadays, it seems like a much better design is to have multiple devices with different form factors that can access shared data via a cloud.

(unless this product is meant as an NSA-proof system, but I don't see that it makes a very convincing product for that use case either...)

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Oh, absolutely. I'd love to have a phone that I can use as a phone, insert into a "laptop dock" (like what the motorola atrix had) and use as a laptop, and insert into a more traditional docking station (to which I've attached a large monitor, ethernet, etc) so I can use it as a desktop.

I'd much prefer to have a single trusted device than spread my digital life across "a cloud".

Exactly. Even with most of my stuff in the Google cloud, the cognitive overhead of going from my Note 2 to my Nexus 7 to my "real" laptop and (recently) to my Chromebook is annoying. I'd much rather have one device set up with all my stuff that automagically turns into the form factor I want, when I want it.

I don't know much about it but plan 9 had alot of interesting innovations in this field. I think the idea of it was to build a "UNIX out of a lot of little systems, not a system out of a lot of little UNIXes"

Old idea that has never taken off, and is probably less likely now that chips are really cheap. This graphic shows MCC’s Modular PC idea http://jkontherun.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/solutions_hq.j...

IBM's MetaPad was a similar idea.

Today, the Asus PadFone probably comes closest.

Yeah, the PadFone is quite attractive. If only they'd kept the Transformer-style keyboard dock from the original...

Tried it for a while but Android software is pretty awful on a 10in or larger screen. For the size/weight, you get much more power with Windows 7/8 (pus AirDroid and Dropbox etc).

yes, of course I want that, for the reason that accessing shared data via a cloud is ludicrously slow, unreliable, fraught with security concerns, and doesn't bring application state with it.

I "work around" application state to a great extent with Xmarks (lets me open remote tabs) and screen, but it's a kludge compared to always having my main computing device in my pocket, ready to connect to any screen and keyboard to just keep working. Imagine hotels offering HDMI input to TV's + a keyboard so I don't have to use my "small" 17" laptop screen. Or internet cafees where I can "bring my own machine" with all my own applications and data.

I don't see how multiple devices is a "much better design" when we're always carrying one device around with us anyway. It's incredibly wasteful. Devices augmenting it with additional functionality, sure.

The only things holding back the smartphone as "the one" main computing device for most people is performance and capacity. Of course there will always be a need for more powerful machines for some niches, an there'll always be a need for e.g. laptop shells (and for "real" laptops too).

But for an increasing number of users, the power of a smartphone is rapidly exceeding what they need from a laptop or desktop computer, and then it becomes increasingly appealing to springing for a higher capacity smartphone if it can double as our main computer "just" with the addition of a "laptop shell" or screen + keyboard.

Keep in mind the PC desktop and laptop market has stagnated - average prices are low because the typical non-Mac PC user opts for low end models because they no longer see a need for the performance bump of the higher end models.

The performance a typical PC user wants, and the performance possible with mobile technology will soon intersect.

The cloud is cool but your putting your data, and for many people that means their livelyhoods in the hands of strangers.

Personal Cloud is a better option.

I personally would be more than happy to own a single device that I could take with me and still know I had all the computing power I needed, without the bulk of a desktop or even a small laptop.

Monitor and keyboard at home, one at the office, phone in my pocket all backed up and synced in my personal private cloud.

Oh, absolutely. I want to carry my data around with me, and access it via whatever the best interface at the moment is -- when I'm driving, when I'm walking around, when I'm at my desk. This phone isn't for me, but I can definitely see the appeal.

Instead ask: Since everyone's already carrying around a very powerful processor and lots of memory, why should they carry around a second processor and memory just to work on a large screen?

I'd love that. The biggest problem for me is that I have a number of monitors and laptops that don't support HDMI. If there was a sub $10 adapter I could get for VGA->HDMI<-VGA then it would be a perfect world.

Luckily this is still a year in the future. It is good amount of time for a)sub $10 adapter to appear b)you might change your hardware for unrelated purpouse c)you might change your hardware for this purpouse over the course of the year for monitors that support vga+hdmi(or DVI+cheap adapter)

>The biggest problem for me is that I have a number of monitors and laptops that don't support HDMI

That's not a problem for anybody else. It's practically a non-issue.

Yea, what kind of display made since 2005 doesn't support hdmi (note: dvi -> hdmi is really easy and readily available)? Analog video died in 2001, and only persists in corporate America, and it is so horribly outdated broken and crappy I can't fathom wasting development effort to get a vga port or adapter working.

Uh, no.

http://shopping1.hp.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/WW-USS...

Those are the monitors HP aims at the enterprise. A lot of them have VGA only, and none of them have HDMI.

So in my organization, we have thousands of monitors that would require an adapter at minimum and maybe a couple dozen floating around that were special ordered one-offs that might have HDMI built-in.

It's an idea that might be a little ahead of its time yet, but I think the potential is there for tomorrow's phones to drive every aspect of our digital lives.

The little geek in me that wants to live in the Jetsons' future is going to be pretty disappointed if, 5+ years from now, I'm not unplugging my phone from a dock at home and plugging it in to one at work to meet all my computing needs.

Yes. I will be very happy to carry not only my data (as I do now) but my whole computer in my pocket, plug it into a keyboard and monitor at home and at work, and use the built-in screen (and perhaps a foldable bluetooth keyboard) elsewhere.

I know about the cloud. I distrust the cloud. The cloud is not for me.

A phone, or better still a tablet, on which I could run Ubuntu dual-screen would be a winner with me. I could have a light tablet for meetings and document-creation and a portable development environment with a portable external monitor.

If Adobe were to put creative suite or there were a real viable alternative to it, Id use this phone as my main web dev machine.

You can already do that: HDMI output, Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

But that doesn't let you run "desktop" software (e.g. LibreOffice, Inkscape/GIMP, a browser with proper keyboard shortcuts, a development environment (!) -- still a much different ball game than mobile apps.

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