Several years ago, I wrote a few blogs about where I felt that the future of computing is heading. The main premise focused on high speed internet, essentially a mesh network with the speed of Google fiber. I feel pretty good at some of the things I predicted have come true, like the personal cloud in some form or another. The other key component that is slowly starting to come true is the phone that you can plug in and use as a computer. HP announced another version of this at the Mobile World Congress to pretty bad press reports. I’m not convinced I agree with TechCrunch’s prognosis, but I also don’t plan to run out and buy one of these phones. I believe that for HP’s product to be successful it really needs to build on the Surface Book. A phone, even a large phone, is nice for some applications, but definitely won’t have enough power for other applications. Especially graphically demanding applications. I’m sure that we’re getting to the point that tablets are getting to be laptop replacements, in the right form factor. I don’t think phones are there yet. What needs to happen, is that the dock for the HP V3 needs to have the ability to enhance the performance of the phone. Furthermore, the switching between docked and undocked needs to be seamless to the point the user doesn’t suffer major slow downs in opening applications that are expected to be used in phone mode (texting, email, etc…). I think we’re finally getting to the point where we’re going to see more and more of these products.

Another more interesting advance in cell phones is the LG G5, which has the ability to add new hardware components, after market. Right now the portion that comes off, removes the battery, but I have a feeling there will be an aftermarket version that will change how that works. I believe that this phone has some serious potential to have an attachment that docks similarly to the HP V3, but with the ability to increase performance of the phone. This is going to be a big deal as more and more people are looking into turning Android into a successful desktop operating system (or maybe laptop operating system). I can imagine a monitor that has the capability to dock with a phone of one kind or another will be developed to further support this ecosystem. It would be easiest to create a dock with an USB-C adapter based on the amount of information and that these are already being used to allow for Graphics Amplification.

I think over the next few years the innovations around the blurring of smart phones with these applications is going to increase. We’ve seen it to some degree with Smart TVs, albeit mostly unsuccessfully compared to set top boxes like Apple TV and Roku. However, with the way phones plow through batteries and the continually evolving use cases of smart phones and computers, this convergence is going to continue and within the next 3-5 years we’ll have at least one company offering a suite of products that is all inclusive to the smartphone as a replacement for computer. Especially, if we’re able to get unlimited 5G on said phone (5G speeds are expected to be in the range of Fiber).