I'm no MSFT fanboy, but this is a big deal. Within 10 years, if not 5, we'll plug all of our phones into keyboards and monitors; and only the odd geek nerd will have a desktop or proper laptop.
The concept of local data will diminish against the cloud, and the market won't have to deal with inflated prices on phones just so they can power desktop screens and TVs. Hook a ChromeBit up to your TV instead, buy a regular laptop or desktop PC as you require it, and let anyone move between them as they like.
It's also increasingly irrelevant if I carry a powerful computer with me anywhere to have it instantly available anyway. The only thing stopping your phone from having terabytes of storage today is that it's currently expensive, and not much demand for it vs. the slight extra space it would take (512GB SD cards are a thing, but apart from size - though micro-SD versions are bound to follow soon - the cost makes them prohibitive for the next year or two).
We're very rapidly approaching the point where - while there may be value in having everything synced to the cloud for backup and universal accessibility - you'll be able to store all your data on media smaller than your thumbnail. Storage density appears to grow far faster than peoples storage needs at the moment.
Personally, my phone is full of photos. Cloud syncing allows for recent photos to be on-device and instant, while there's more than could ever fit on my phone stored just seconds away. Once Photos.app and Facebook.app are on-device, I could sign in with my cloud credentials and they automatically log me in and all my content is "just there" (this is true today). When we can log into any device, display "my" home screen with not-locally-installed YikYak.app (46MB) and run it on-demand we'll see true portability of profiles and portability of devices will begin to take a back seat.
You can since WP8.1 GDR2.
>Why should I believe they'll let me connect "future devices" to an external display
People can connect latest Lumias with Miracast support to external display for mirroring. Sadly, 920 is not one of them.
http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/how-to/wp8/connectivity/pr...
> mount a thumb drive in its USB port
This will be supported on future devices according to this:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn...
>treat it as a USB mass storage device
This will probably be never supported because implementing it will require disconnecting storage from phone's OS and MTP is supposed to be enough.
Edit: miracast is not supported on 920.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reDkEesnTpE&hd=1
But I'm not sure that I want wireless charging near my pocket.
A large screen is still a nice place to attach your phone to, instead of a dedicated docking station. At least it can provide a lot of electric power. Also, it's a reasonable place to put your phone's camera so that it's looking at you.
We have a tech event here in Brazil that attracts about 8k people. Its impossible to use wifi reliably during the event and sometimes even bluetooth suffers.