Comment by yjftsjthsd-h
3 years ago
That's begging the question; the only reason phones aren't general-purpose computers is because Google and Apple tend to block out anything that would let the user actually use the computer as more than a toy.
3 years ago
That's begging the question; the only reason phones aren't general-purpose computers is because Google and Apple tend to block out anything that would let the user actually use the computer as more than a toy.
Mobile phones preceed Google and Apple, including the whole concept of stores and selling apps.
Series 30, Series 60, brew, J2ME, Psion OS, Pocket PC,....
They were never general purpose computers.
Pocket PC/Windows CE/Windows Mobile all seem far more like examples of phones trying really hard to be general-purpose like, rather than examples of phones being different. And getting fairly close.
Personally I think it's hard to justify phones as something different than general purpose computers. A device that can load fairly arbitrary apps is already almost by definition a general purpose computers, it's just a matter of what has been built and/or what is allowed to be shipped, and what system resources are available (few, in many of your examples, often owing to it being the aughts). Now that the system resources are clearly no longer a differentiator, it's almost all just corporate-politics & the war-against-general-purpose-computing vested-interests enforcing the distinction.
There are plenty of apps to do coding if one so will, with the APIs provided on the platform.
Not everything with a CPU needs to run yet another UNIX clone.
There are plenty of computers and maker boards for that purpose.