Comment by lanthissa
1 year ago
this done well is a transformational thing, its just no one has been willing to invest yet, but the compute on a phone is now good enough to do most things most users do on desktop.
I can easily see the future of personal computing being a mobile device with peripherals that use its compute and cloud for anything serious. be that airpods, glasses, watches, or just hooking that device up to a larger screen.
theres not a great reason for an individual to own processing power in a desktop, laptop, phone, and glasses when most are idle while using the others.
The future of personal computing is being dictated by the economics of it, which are that the optimal route to extract value from consumers is to have walled-garden software systems gated by per-month subscription access and/or massive forced advertising. This leads to everything being in the cloud and only fairly thin clients running on user hardware. That gives the most control to the system owners and the least control to the user.
Given that all the compute and all the data is on the cloud, there is little point in making ways for users to do clever interconnect things with their local devices.
I've heard so many "The future of personal computing" statements that haven't come true, so I don't take much stock in them.
I remember when everyone thought we were going to throw out our desktops and do all our work on phones and tablets! (Someone who kept insisting on this finally admitted that they couldn't do a spreadsheet on a phone or tablet.)
> Given that all the compute and all the data is on the cloud, there is little point in making ways for users to do clever interconnect things with their local devices.
IMO, it's a pain-in-the-ass to manage multiple devices, so IMO, it's much easier to just plug my phone into a clamshell and have all my apps show up there.
> we were going to throw out our desktops and do all our work on phones and tablets! (Someone who kept insisting on this finally admitted that they couldn't do a spreadsheet on a phone or tablet.)
We're almost there. The cool kids are already using 12" touchscreen ARM devices that people from 10 or 20 years ago would probably think of as tablets. Some kinds of work benefit greatly from a keyboard, but that doesn't necessarily mean you want oneall the time - I still think the future is either 360-fold laptops with a good tablet mode (indeed that's the present for me, my main machine is a HP Envy) or something like the MS Surface line with their detachable "keyboard cover".
7 replies →
> (Someone who kept insisting on this finally admitted that they couldn't do a spreadsheet on a phone or tablet.)
I think that's to generative AI, I would expect people to gradually replace manually creating a spreadsheet with 'vibecoding' it.
> IMO, it's a pain-in-the-ass to manage multiple devices, so IMO, it's much easier to just plug my phone into a clamshell and have all my apps show up there.
ChromeOS already works like that, when you log in on different devices, without having to physically lug one device around that you plug into different shells.
I know many people where that is exactly the case, not everyone is doing spreadsheets or coding.
Also I haven't owned a desktop since 2003, and my last one at work was in 2006, although we may debate laptops with docking station are also desktops.
3 replies →
> (Someone who kept insisting on this finally admitted that they couldn't do a spreadsheet on a phone or tablet.)
Desktop LibreOffice works fine on my Librem 5 phone.
I think this is a really good take - Apple especially (but Google too) aren't gonna naturally invest time and resources into software that'll make you less likely to buy more of their hardware.
That said, market incentives can and do change pretty fast. Especially with climate change, and current tension in global supply chains, we could see a shift away from hardware caused by taxes or pirce hikes (I'm not saying we will though).
That'd be a game changer for how much companies might invest in changing what computing looks like.
> the compute on a phone is now good enough to do most things most users do on desktop.
Really, the compute on a phone has been good enough for at least a decade now once we got USB C. We're still largely doing on our phones and laptops the same things we were doing in 2005. I'm surprised it took this long
I'm happy this is becoming a real thing. I hope they'll also allow the phone's screen to be used like a trackpad. It wouldn't be ideal, but there's no reason the touchscreen can't be a fully featured input device.
I'm fully agreed with you on the wasted processing power-- I think we'll eventually head toward a model of having one computing device with a number of thin clients which are locally connected.
> I hope they'll also allow the phone's screen to be used like a trackpad. It wouldn't be ideal, but there's no reason the touchscreen can't be a fully featured input device.
I might have misunderstood but do you mean as an input device attached to your desktop computer? Kdeconnect has made that available for quite some time out of the box. (Although it's been a long time since I used it and when I tested it just now apparently I've somehow managed to break the input processing half of the software on my desktop in the interim.)
Yes! I enjoy KDEConnect a lot for that :) With the phone being the computer, the latency can probably be made low enough that it just feels like a proper touchpad
> We're still largely doing on our phones and laptops the same things we were doing in 2005. I'm surprised it took this long
Approximately no-one was watching 4k feature-length videos on their phones in 2005, or playing ray traced 3d games on their laptops.
Sending plain text messages is pretty much the same as back then, yes. But these days I'm also taking high resolution photos and videos and share those with others via my phone.
> I hope they'll also allow the phone's screen to be used like a trackpad.
Samsung's DeX already does that.
> I'm fully agreed with you on the wasted processing power-- I think we'll eventually head toward a model of having one computing device with a number of thin clients which are locally connected.
Your own 'good enough' logic already suggests otherwise? Processors are still getting cheap and better, so why not just duplicate them? Instead of having a dumb large screen (and keyboard) that you plug your phone into, it's not much extra cost to add some processing power to that screen, and make it a full desktop pc.
If we are getting to 'thin client' world, it'll be because of 'cloud', not because of connecting to our phones. Even today, most of what people do on their desktops can be done in the browser. So we likely see more of that.
> Approximately no-one was watching 4k feature-length videos on their phones in 2005, or playing ray traced 3d games on their laptops.
Do people really do this now? Watching a movie on my phone is so suboptimal I'd only consider it if I really have no other option. Holding it up for 2 hours, being stuck with that tiny screen, brrr.
I can imagine doing it on a plane ride when I'm not really interested in the movie and am just doing it to waste some time. But when it's a movie I'm really looking forward to, I'd want to really experience it. A VR headset does help here but a mobile device doesn't.
2 replies →
We were watching videos and playing games on our laptops in 2005. Of course they mostly weren't 4K or raytraced, don't be silly.
The thin client world is one anticipating a world with fewer resources to make these excess chips. It's just a speculation of what things will look like when we can't sustain what is unsustainable.
5 replies →
Last time I used DeX you phone does become a TouchPad for the desktop when plugged to a monitor
Yes it can, it can also become a keyboard in fact.
One thing I'm kinda missing is that it doesn't seem to be able to become both at the same time on a system that has the screen space for that. Like a tablet or Z Fold series.
:D I avoid Samsung products but I'm happy that at least exists. I hope it's not patented, and Google is both able to put the same thing into Android, and that it's available in AOSP
This concept has been floating around for a long time. I think Motorola was pitching it in 2012, and I'm sure confidential concepts in the same vein have been tried in the labs of most of the big players.
> I can easily see the future of personal computing being a mobile device with peripherals that use its compute and cloud for anything serious. be that airpods, glasses, watches, or just hooking that device up to a larger screen.
I don't see that at all.
That's because I think over time the processing power of a eg laptop will become a small fraction of its costs (both in terms of buying and in terms of power).
The laptop form factor is pretty good for having a portable keyboard, pointing device and biggish screen together. Outsourcing the compute to a phone still leaves you with the need for keyboard, pointing device and screen. You only save on the processor, which is going to be a smaller and smaller part.
> theres not a great reason for an individual to own processing power in a desktop, laptop, phone, and glasses when most are idle while using the others.
Even in your scenario, most of your devices will be idle most of the time anyway. And they don't use any energy when turned off. So you are only saving the cost to acquire the processor itself.
Desktop computer processors that can hit the computing power of a mobile processor are really, really cheap already today.
You are ignoring data location and software installs.
Having all your data always with you stored locally (on your phone) is simpler than syncing and more private than cloud.
One OS with all your software. No need to install same app multiple times on different devices. Don't need to deal with questions like, for how many devices is my license valid for. However, apps would need to come with a reactive UI. No more separate mobile and desktop versions.
Example, you take a photos on your phone, dock it at your desk or laptop shell, and edit them comfortably on a big screen, with an app you bought and installed once. No internet connection is required.
A docking station could be more than just display and input devices. It could contain storage for backing up your data from the phone. Or powerful CPU and GPU for extended compute power (you would still use OS and apps/games on your phone with computations being delegated to more powerful HW).
This could replicate many things cloud offers today (excluding collaboration). No need to deal with an online account for your personal stuff. IMO, it would probably be less mystical than cloud to most users.
> Having all your data always with you stored locally (on your phone) is simpler than syncing and more private than cloud.
You need to sync it anyway. Having that phone with you all day also means exposing it to a lot of risk involving theft, drops and other kind of damage. You need that sync for backup purposes.
I agree actually having it on the phone is great though. I use DeX a LOT, it's a great way of working when I don't have my laptop with me but do have a docking station available (e.g. at the office when I forget my laptop or just dropped in unplanned)
2 replies →
> You are ignoring data location and software installs.
Caching works well for that.
> Having all your data always with you stored locally (on your phone) is simpler than syncing and more private than cloud.
Have a look at how GMail handles this. It has my emails cached locally on my devices so I can read them offline (and can also compose and hit-the-send-key when offfline), but GMail also does intelligent syncing behind the scenes. It just works.
> Example, you take a photos on your phone, dock it at your desk or laptop shell, and edit them comfortably on a big screen, with an app you bought and installed once. No internet connection is required.
My devices are online all the time anyway.
> A docking station could be more than just display and input devices. It could contain storage for backing up your data from the phone.
I'm already backing up to the Cloud automatically. And Google handles all the messy details, even if my house burns down.
> Or powerful CPU and GPU for extended compute power (you would still use OS and apps/games on your phone with computations being delegated to more powerful HW).
How is that different from the ChromeOS scenario, apart from that the syncing in your case doesn't involve the cloud?
> This could replicate many things cloud offers today (excluding collaboration). No need to deal with an online account for your personal stuff. IMO, it would probably be less mystical than cloud to most users.
No, it would be more annoying, because I couldn't just log in anywhere in the world, and get access to my data. And I would have to manually bring devices in contact to sync them.
You can build what you are suggesting. And some people (like you!) will like it. But customers by-and-large don't want it.
3 replies →
A laptop wins everytime because I don't have to carry around all my peripherals and set em all up again. Unless there's going to be dock setups in every conference room, coffee shop, table in my house, airplane, car, deck, etc, a laptop makes more sense.
The peripherals need not be anything more than a clamshell screen + keyboard, same as a laptop.
Than what do you save? Only the system-on-a-chip (CPU, GPU, RAM).
And the hardware to get an SoC with phone-like performance in a laptop or desktop form factor is relatively cheap, just because you have so much more space and power and cooling to work with.
(Your laptop-shell definitely needs its own power supply, whether that be a battery or a cable, because the screen alone will take more power than your phone's battery can provide for any sustained period of use.)
Right but if it's the same as a laptop why not just use a laptop?
The only things I can think of are you really want to keep all the data on your phone and don't want to use cloud sync solutions (Dropbox etc.), or you really want to save a couple of hundred dollars getting a (probably terrible) laptop without a motherboard. Not very compelling IMO.
3 replies →
Those would be the most expensive parts of the laptop. You're basically just saving on a mobile SoC which isn't much of a cost.
this done well is a transformational thing, its just no one has been willing to invest yet
I think we've seen this before. Back before phones were "smart" there was one (Nokia, maybe?) that you could put on a little dock into which you could plug a keyboard and monitor.
Obviously, it didn't take off. Perhaps it was ahead of its time. Or, as you say, it wasn't done well at the time.
Phones accepting Bluetooth keyboard connections was very common back in my road warrior (digital nomad) days, but the screen was always the annoyance factor. Writing e-mails on my SonyEricsson on a boat on the South China Sea felt like "the future!"
Slightly related, I built most of my first startup with a Palm Pilot Ⅲ and an attached keyboard. Again, though, a larger screen would have been a game changer.
AIUI, the main problem in the cell phone era is that by the time you create a notebook shell with an even halfway-decent screen, keyboard, battery, and the other things you'd want in your shell, it's hard to sell it next to the thing right next to it that is all that, but they also stuck a cheap computer in it (and is therefore no longer a dock). Yeah, it's $50 more expensive, but it looks way more than $50 more useful.
What may shift the balance is that slowly but surely USB-C docks are becoming more common, on their own terms, not related to cell phones. At some point we may pass a critical threshold where there's enough of them that selling a phone that can just natively use any USB-C dock you've got lying around becomes a sufficient distinguishing feature that people start looking for it. Even just treating it as a bonus would be a start.
I've got two docks in my house now; one a big powerful one to run the work-provided laptop in a more remote-work-friendly form factor, and fairly cheap one to turn my Steam deck into a halfway-decent Switch competitor (though "halfway-decent" and no more; it's definitely more finicky). We really ought to be getting to the point that a cell phone with a docked monitor, keyboard, & mouse for dorm room usage (replacing the desktop, TV, and if whoever pulls this off plays their cards right, the gaming console(s)) should start looking appealing to college students pretty soon here. The docks themselves are rapidly commoditizing if they aren't there already.
Once it becomes a feature that we increasingly start to just expect on our phones, then maybe the "notebook-like" case for a cell phone starts to look more appealing as an accessory. We've pretty much demonstrated it can't carry itself as its own product.
That would probably start the clock on the "notebook" as its own distinct product, though it would take years for them to finally be turned into nothing but shells for cell phones + a high-end, expensive performance-focused line that is itself more-or-less the replacement for desktops, which would themselves only be necessary for high-end graphics or places where you need tons and tons of storage and you don't want 10 USB-C drives flopping around separately.
BTW you don't even need a dock if you have a USB-C monitor with USB and audio ports, which is not that uncommon. The monitor acts like a USB hub, so if you plug in your keyboard and mouse that's your computer essentially
1 reply →
> I think we've seen this before. Back before phones were "smart" there was one (Nokia, maybe?) that you could put on a little dock into which you could plug a keyboard and monitor.
Still in the "smart" era, but the Motorola Atrix allowed that, but with its own laptop form factor dock.
https://www.cnet.com/culture/how-does-the-motorola-atrix-4g-...
I had one of these Atrix and laptop docks. It was really good, but sadly way ahead of its time. The desktop was a Debian-based Linux desktop and you could install various ARM packages. Unfortunately, the phone just wasn't powerful enough at the time. The touchpad was also not brilliant compared to Macs (probably better than Windows touchpads of the time). I sold it on ebay to a guy who plugged his Raspberry Pi into it, since the Atrix dock used mini HDMI and microUSB connectors. This has obviously been replaced in the modern age with USB-C.
I am pretty sure that modern phones are more than powerful enough! My wife's iPhone 16 Pro Max would be amazingly useful if not limited by iOS (which always feels like it's hiding true capabilities behind an Etch-A-Sketch interface to me). If you could plug the iPhone in and run a macOS desktop (which hasn't really changed for 15+ years), that'd be great. Thanks in advance.
I have a POCO F7 Ultra which is powerful enough to run LLMs via PocketPal and could easily replace my daily laptop or PC for work if it wasn't scuppered by USB2 on the USB-C port. If I could easily run ollama on the phone via a web interface I would because it's faster than my main PC for LLMs I think!
On Android you can go into Developer settings and force enable the ability to use desktop mode but sadly I can't without proper display support on the USB C.
I had an Atrix 2 that I was excited could work with a laptop-form dock. I never bothered to actually get the dock, though.
> I think we've seen this before. Back before phones were "smart" there was one (Nokia, maybe?) that you could put on a little dock into which you could plug a keyboard and monitor.
There have been multiple attempts at this over the years.
https://liliputing.com/5-laptop-docks-that-let-you-use-a-sma...
I think power was a real problem. A 2010 phone was bit as close to a laptop in performance.
An M4 Mac is way more powerful than an iPhone 16, but the iPhone is powerful enough to prove a much better experience on normal tasks compared to what that 2010 phone could at the time.
Basically I think everything has enough headroom that it’s not the compromise it would’ve been before. The biggest constraints on an iPhone’s performance are the battery and cooling. If you’re plugged in the battery doesn’t matter. And unless you’re not playing a fancy game cooling may not be an issue due to headroom.
> but the screen was always the annoyance factor.
Agreed. For this reason I'm quite excited about glasses like the Xreal One Pro. Having to carry around with me just my phone, a pair of glasses and a lightweight Bluetooth keyboard would be a game changer for me in terms of ergonomics.
Do you have this yet? I wonder how well it works in practice. I know some people using it with DeX but they're pretty expensive (around $400 I think) so I didn't try it myself.
1 reply →
I remember there was a fad I think in 2009 or 2010 where a bunch of Android manufacturers released 'laptops' (just a display and keyboard) with a dock connector in the back that was meant to turn the phone into a laptop basically
Obviously the trend didn't take off
> but the compute on a phone is now good enough to do most things most users do on desktop.
The compute power yes, but the OSs and UX are shit.
Well, they are a generation ahead in many perspective than desktop UIs, so.
E.g. android/ios has better security than Windows/GNU Linux/MacOS, much more reliable suspend/wake functionality, much better battery management, etc.
Like it's a 50/50 chance my laptop with Win 11 will wake up fully charged or fully discharged in the morning, and whether it will be kind enough to actually be ready for work, or I can go brew a coffee before it's ready..
Since Windows has started this iteration of their move to ARM, I wondered if Microsoft would be the first to do this properly, by building an adaptable/mobile Desktop/UX to Windows 12 (or 13), pumping up the Microsoft Store, and then relaunching the Windows (Surface, I guess) Phone with full fat Windows on it.
In a way it's the same strategy that Nintendo used to re-gain a strong position in gaming (including the lucrative Home Console market where they'd fallen to a distant last place) - drafting their dominance in Handheld into Home Console by merging the two.
Windows Phone had this ability, it was called Continuum: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...
Also Ubuntu phone had it and it worked well. Better than on the phone itself due to lack of good small-screen-capable software.
I strongly agree, and have felt this way for a long time. We are being sold many processors, each placed into their own device. The reality is our phone processor could be used to run our TVs, streaming devices, monitors, VR glasses, consoles, laptops, etc. That's less profitable, however.
With cables, yes. And LG did that for a while in fact, they had a VR headset that would plug into the phone: https://www.cnet.com/reviews/lg-360-vr-review/ It wasn't a success but this was more software-related and also some hardware-skimping. It was a good idea, it just seems like the devs forgot to actually try using it before declaring it a finished product.
But wireless the lag is so bad that it's not really usable. Like Wireless DeX. Definitely not good enough for processor-less VR glasses (even the wireless VR streaming from meta does require significant processing power on the glasses end).
> this done well is a transformational thing, its just no one has been willing to invest yet
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19328085
To be clear, compute on a phone has been good enough for what most people do on a desktop for a long long time. That is not at all a new thing.
There's no need to stop there, why not just generalize that already to the WEF-approved "there's not a great reason for an individual to own anything"
in a sense apple is already doing this, since there's shared chip tech in the laptops and phones.
I still will prefer the form factor of a laptop for anything serious though; screen, speakers, keyboard.
Yes you can get peripherals for a phone, yes I have tried that, no they're not good. Though perhaps with foldable screens this could change in the future.
Apple is intentionally hampering the desktop experience on the iPad and is very late in brining Stage Manager to the iPhone (the rumor is now iOS 19). Until there is serious competition (this and/or improvements to DeX, Apple will drag their feet because they want to sell you three compute device categories (or four if you count the Vision Pro).
Also, stage manager is not a good way of doing real work. It's with good reason that people abhor it on the Mac. On an iPad with no better alternative it's workable but not great.
So true! I have experimented with plugging an iPad Pro into an Apple 7K Studio Monitor with keyboard and an Apple Trackpad and Stage Manager: close to being generally useful, but I also get the idea that Apple is purposely holding back to prevent reducing Mac sales.
That is why I am rooting for Samsung DeX and what Google is offering: Samsung and Google can make money for their own reasons making a universal personal digital device.
They have the hardware. They don’t provide ANY software for this kind of thing though. And there is a very real chance it could cannibalize some Mac sales.
I’ve always wondered if this kind of thing is actually that useful, but it’s not even an option for me because of the above.
Seems surprising Google didn’t act on this earlier. But maybe they didn’t want to cannibalize the Chromebooks?
I get the feeling very very few people know this exists at all on some Samsung phones. I’ve asked some tech-y people with Samsungs about it before and they didn’t even know it existed.
True! Apple’s already ahead with the shared chip setup between Macs and iPhones. But yeah, for real work, nothing beats a proper laptop — big screen, keyboard, good speakers. I’ve tried using a phone with accessories too… not the same vibe. Maybe foldables will change that someday!
A desktop then, or a laptop plugged into a proper screen, real speakers etc. A laptop is still a compromise.