Why can't you "power a PC" with your smartphone?
November 13, 2021 6:06 PM Subscribe
What are the main technological obstacles stopping us from having a docking station which would take a smartphone and use it to run desktop Windows?
I don't know the technological limitations, but I'm keen to learn where the main obstacles to this lie. Because I'd be interested in buying something like this. Instead of separately upgrading my PC and my phone, I'd just buy a new phone then.
I don't know the technological limitations, but I'm keen to learn where the main obstacles to this lie. Because I'd be interested in buying something like this. Instead of separately upgrading my PC and my phone, I'd just buy a new phone then.
If you plug in an USB-C to HDMI converter, you'll find that many smartphones will drive an external monitor. If you plug in a USB-C hub and then plug in a keyboard and mouse, you'll find that you can also control your smart phone as you would a PC.
There are two prominent barriers to what you're describing:
posted by saeculorum at 6:20 PM on November 13, 2021 [29 favorites]
There are two prominent barriers to what you're describing:
- Heat dissipation: a smart phone is relatively small, and often made of plastic-like components. Although top end smartphones have processors that rival low-end PCs, they are unable to do so for any extended amount of time without literally melting. There is relatively limited surface area to dissipate heat from a smartphone, and generally no fan. On a PC, there is considerable amount of area to dissipate heat, and generally one or more fans. Further, smart phone processors are coupled to a lithium polymer battery that becomes quite dangerous when heated significantly - to the point of potentially being a fire risk.
- Application development: most smartphone applications and most smartphone processors are optimized to be used in single-tasked operation (one app being displayed), with a finger as an input device. This is not what you use a PC for. Most app developers are averse to making two significantly different versions of each of their apps for multiple different input and interaction modalities. This extends all the way to the OS - smartphone OSes are designed for responsiveness of a single application, whereas desktop OSes are designed for balancing multiple applications all operating at the same time.
posted by saeculorum at 6:20 PM on November 13, 2021 [29 favorites]
Microsoft was heading towards this direction with its Windows Phone experimentally before they pulled the plug on the entire Windows Phone idea altogether. (For example: https://www.theverge.com/2015/4/29/8513519/microsoft-windows-10-continuum-for-phones)
The closest practical device probably is the iPad. You do get web, email, and apps from Microsoft, Adobe, etc. But, of course, iPads are not mobile-phone-sized, and you will have to give up on the phone part of the phone, even with 4G/5G connectivity.
posted by applesurf at 6:34 PM on November 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
The closest practical device probably is the iPad. You do get web, email, and apps from Microsoft, Adobe, etc. But, of course, iPads are not mobile-phone-sized, and you will have to give up on the phone part of the phone, even with 4G/5G connectivity.
posted by applesurf at 6:34 PM on November 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
In case it's not clear, Samsung Dex is built into their higher end phones and can connect to an external display. Older phones like the 8 and 9 S and Note series require a cable -- later models like the 10 and 20 do not but can use one for better performance. The external display can be a "dumb" display like a standard monitor that you would normally hook a desktop Windows PC up to or a smarter display that's built into a tablet or laptop -- though the Dex experience makes those latter displays dumb and acts as the brain.
For example, I use a Samsung Note20 Ultra. When I travel, I take it and an external Bluetooth keyboard (in my case a TextBlade, but any will do (do not buy a TextBlade, they are not shipping yet)). Together those two are powerful enough for me to do any writing (mostly what I do), but if I want more real estate or want to watch a movie or play a game, I can hook up to a monitor in a cafe or hotel or whatever.
Wireless will be a little slower so you can also connect with a cheap USB-C to HDMI cable.
Here's a better explanation than the video I linked above.
posted by dobbs at 6:34 PM on November 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
For example, I use a Samsung Note20 Ultra. When I travel, I take it and an external Bluetooth keyboard (in my case a TextBlade, but any will do (do not buy a TextBlade, they are not shipping yet)). Together those two are powerful enough for me to do any writing (mostly what I do), but if I want more real estate or want to watch a movie or play a game, I can hook up to a monitor in a cafe or hotel or whatever.
Wireless will be a little slower so you can also connect with a cheap USB-C to HDMI cable.
Here's a better explanation than the video I linked above.
posted by dobbs at 6:34 PM on November 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
Lots of phones have the ability to drive external displays and make use of external peripherals if you have the right cables. It's been a thing for at least a decade now. The problem is more on the software side. What makes for a good smartphone experience generally doesn't make for a good desktop, laptop, or even tablet experience. Google learned that the hard way, leading to ChromeOS.
Microsoft, to their credit, tried at least three times. There were a bunch of WP8 phones that could do what you want, but between the dearth of apps that ran on ARM Windows and the suboptimal nature of the tile interface with a mouse, it hardly got any use.
There have also been a series of phones running Linux that could be used that way, but the jarring switch between desktop apps and phone apps made it unpleasant.
posted by wierdo at 7:14 PM on November 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
Microsoft, to their credit, tried at least three times. There were a bunch of WP8 phones that could do what you want, but between the dearth of apps that ran on ARM Windows and the suboptimal nature of the tile interface with a mouse, it hardly got any use.
There have also been a series of phones running Linux that could be used that way, but the jarring switch between desktop apps and phone apps made it unpleasant.
posted by wierdo at 7:14 PM on November 13, 2021 [3 favorites]
In theory, nothing. In practice, a lot.
Here's someone experimentally booting Windows on an iPad Pro, which is considered a powerful tablet device. Note that the desktop takes about four minutes to appear after booting. This is because Windows is just not optimized for these less powerful (and more energy-efficient) devices.
As applesurf pointed out upthread, Windows Mobile came close to merging the phone and desktop worlds, but failed -- apps were either too phone-like for the desktop or too desktop-like for the phone, and legacy Windows apps and games wouldn't work either.
Apple is coming closer to merging the phone/tablet and desktop worlds, but hasn't yet. There's still 20 years of legacy software that would have to be rewritten and tested. Although you can run iPad/iPhone apps on newer Macs.
Apple would love for you to buy an iPhone and a Macbook. Google would love for you to buy an Android phone and a Chromebook. Samsung would love for you to buy a Samsung phone, Samsung tablet, Samsung notebook, Samsung TV ... see where I'm going?
posted by credulous at 7:30 PM on November 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
Here's someone experimentally booting Windows on an iPad Pro, which is considered a powerful tablet device. Note that the desktop takes about four minutes to appear after booting. This is because Windows is just not optimized for these less powerful (and more energy-efficient) devices.
As applesurf pointed out upthread, Windows Mobile came close to merging the phone and desktop worlds, but failed -- apps were either too phone-like for the desktop or too desktop-like for the phone, and legacy Windows apps and games wouldn't work either.
Apple is coming closer to merging the phone/tablet and desktop worlds, but hasn't yet. There's still 20 years of legacy software that would have to be rewritten and tested. Although you can run iPad/iPhone apps on newer Macs.
Apple would love for you to buy an iPhone and a Macbook. Google would love for you to buy an Android phone and a Chromebook. Samsung would love for you to buy a Samsung phone, Samsung tablet, Samsung notebook, Samsung TV ... see where I'm going?
posted by credulous at 7:30 PM on November 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
NexDock can do this with compatible Samsung and Huawei smartphones. (It seems that at the moment only these two companies sell smartphones with a "desktop mode" feature.)
posted by oceano at 7:55 PM on November 13, 2021
posted by oceano at 7:55 PM on November 13, 2021
We don’t have this technology for business/marketing/design reasons, not technological reasons. A modern smartphone is absolutely powerful enough to be a decent desktop computer, but in practice, attempts at that have produced awkward UIs that suffer from the flying car problem: it can be done, but the result isn’t a particularly good car or a good aircraft.
And, cynically, why would Apple want to sell you one device when they can sell you two instead?
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 7:59 PM on November 13, 2021 [4 favorites]
And, cynically, why would Apple want to sell you one device when they can sell you two instead?
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 7:59 PM on November 13, 2021 [4 favorites]
As others have said, Microsoft tried it multiple times and it never worked out, and modern attempts from dedicated smartphone makers aren't likely to go much better. Pre-iPhone "pocket PC" UIs were much more desktop-like, which would have made for an easier transition between pocket and full-sized modes, but the iPhone and Android interfaces ate them all up.
You can now run a fully-fledged PC operating system off a stick with a HDMI port, and it'll connect to Bluetooth peripherals -- a Roku or Fire Stick or Chromecast are just stripped-down versions of this -- but the tech consensus favours continuity of data through cloud-based sync and continuity of functionality through things like Apple's Handoff and Continuity.
Convergence happens when there are good reasons for it: the huge iterative improvement of smartphone cameras is the best example. "Desktop mode" is one of those things that not only has been tried and failed: it's something that has only a marginal business case if a company actually nails it.
posted by holgate at 8:19 PM on November 13, 2021
You can now run a fully-fledged PC operating system off a stick with a HDMI port, and it'll connect to Bluetooth peripherals -- a Roku or Fire Stick or Chromecast are just stripped-down versions of this -- but the tech consensus favours continuity of data through cloud-based sync and continuity of functionality through things like Apple's Handoff and Continuity.
Convergence happens when there are good reasons for it: the huge iterative improvement of smartphone cameras is the best example. "Desktop mode" is one of those things that not only has been tried and failed: it's something that has only a marginal business case if a company actually nails it.
posted by holgate at 8:19 PM on November 13, 2021
It's hard to compare, but the price per performance ratio is far higher for phones than desktop computers.
For example, this crummy* $100 graphics card has a maximum performance of 1127 GFlops. An iPhone 7 has around 257 GFlops and an iPhone 12 is about 4 times faster so guessing around 1000 GFlops for a $600 phone. All told you can get a desktop computer of comparable performance to the iPhone 12 for less than $300 (once you buy the box, power supply, CPU, motherboard).
So paying for a phone which is as fast as a junky PC will cost at least twice as much. Most people would rather have a smaller, lighter phone and a separate desktop PC for the same money so the market isn't big enough to support mainstream products which can do both.
* people don't usually buy low-end cards, it's probably possible to double performance for only 50% more money
posted by flimflam at 9:11 PM on November 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
For example, this crummy* $100 graphics card has a maximum performance of 1127 GFlops. An iPhone 7 has around 257 GFlops and an iPhone 12 is about 4 times faster so guessing around 1000 GFlops for a $600 phone. All told you can get a desktop computer of comparable performance to the iPhone 12 for less than $300 (once you buy the box, power supply, CPU, motherboard).
So paying for a phone which is as fast as a junky PC will cost at least twice as much. Most people would rather have a smaller, lighter phone and a separate desktop PC for the same money so the market isn't big enough to support mainstream products which can do both.
* people don't usually buy low-end cards, it's probably possible to double performance for only 50% more money
posted by flimflam at 9:11 PM on November 13, 2021 [2 favorites]
Saeculorum has the gist of it: It's possible but not optimal. This is especially true as you get into anything with graphics needs. A phone won't compete will with even a mediocre laptop and you lose the portability once you imagine a big screen & keyboard.
I could just barely imagine Steve Jobs making it seem "cool" to check into a hotel with just a phone, enough so that hotels actually start providing guests the peripherals. But it's a tiny fraction of users, especially without a bunch of unused monitors waiting to be used.
(Incidentally I think the real point of Microsoft's demos here weren't actually intended to convince people to use he phone that way, but rather on continuing their practice of catering to developers: Showing that if you coded for the desktop you could make it into an app for a Windows phone, too. )
posted by mark k at 9:13 PM on November 13, 2021
I could just barely imagine Steve Jobs making it seem "cool" to check into a hotel with just a phone, enough so that hotels actually start providing guests the peripherals. But it's a tiny fraction of users, especially without a bunch of unused monitors waiting to be used.
(Incidentally I think the real point of Microsoft's demos here weren't actually intended to convince people to use he phone that way, but rather on continuing their practice of catering to developers: Showing that if you coded for the desktop you could make it into an app for a Windows phone, too. )
posted by mark k at 9:13 PM on November 13, 2021
People are giving you a lot of tech-y answers, but not really answering the "why" part of "why it hasn't happened".
Companies keep trying this - it seems like a no-brainer that everyone would want. But it keeps not working, because it doesn't "hit" exactly the sweet spot it needs to. There seems to be a couple of reasons for it, when this happens - because it *has* happened before, with other types of devices. They try and try, and it takes a while, but one finally just CLICKS and catches on. Non-landline phones are an excellent example; so are ebooks / ebook readers and tablets.
That sweet spot seems to be a magic area where the tech is at just the right place, someone comes up with exactly the right purpose/marketing angle, and the price is finally low enough that the general public is willing to buy it. In other words, it has to be cheap enough, convenient enough, and useful enough without a hassle. Sometimes, that "useful enough" means it has to wait until the world itself is ready for it.
Heck, people were selling ebooks in 1995, and they were scanning and uploading and sharing craft patterns then, too. It took a ridiculously long time to get to where we are now, where with the snap of a phone or tablet camera, you can have an entire craft book "scanned", turned into pdf, and sent elsewhere in mere minutes. Tech caught up, then it took a while more for there to be enough interest to apply it to things like crochet (instead of music or movies - supply & demand, of course), and then fast enough internet speed where the download is seconds... and no one has to resort to Usenet or IRC.
There's sweet spots. And for that particular idea, we haven't hit it yet. It may take a while yet; the current highest quality smartphones are approximately equivalent to the lowest end PCs. At some point, somewhere, we're likely to hit the point where the increase in quality is sort-of pointless for most uses, but we're clearly not there yet. Maybe we would be if super-fast internet was consistently available almost everywhere for such a nominal price that the price is barely relevant.
That, too, will happen eventually. Mobile phones - a thing we laughed at people for thinking they were so special they needed one, just 25 years ago - have become ubiquitous. Desktops are getting more rare, and laptops are getting smaller, while tablets are increasing in size. The change from work outside the home to WFH or hybrid schedules may end up affecting it, too... who knows?
Me, I'm just busy being annoyed that e-paper tablets are still more expensive than I think they ought to be. I'd love an iPad with the screen of a Kindle, I just don't want to pay as much as an iPad for it.
posted by stormyteal at 9:27 PM on November 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
Companies keep trying this - it seems like a no-brainer that everyone would want. But it keeps not working, because it doesn't "hit" exactly the sweet spot it needs to. There seems to be a couple of reasons for it, when this happens - because it *has* happened before, with other types of devices. They try and try, and it takes a while, but one finally just CLICKS and catches on. Non-landline phones are an excellent example; so are ebooks / ebook readers and tablets.
That sweet spot seems to be a magic area where the tech is at just the right place, someone comes up with exactly the right purpose/marketing angle, and the price is finally low enough that the general public is willing to buy it. In other words, it has to be cheap enough, convenient enough, and useful enough without a hassle. Sometimes, that "useful enough" means it has to wait until the world itself is ready for it.
Heck, people were selling ebooks in 1995, and they were scanning and uploading and sharing craft patterns then, too. It took a ridiculously long time to get to where we are now, where with the snap of a phone or tablet camera, you can have an entire craft book "scanned", turned into pdf, and sent elsewhere in mere minutes. Tech caught up, then it took a while more for there to be enough interest to apply it to things like crochet (instead of music or movies - supply & demand, of course), and then fast enough internet speed where the download is seconds... and no one has to resort to Usenet or IRC.
There's sweet spots. And for that particular idea, we haven't hit it yet. It may take a while yet; the current highest quality smartphones are approximately equivalent to the lowest end PCs. At some point, somewhere, we're likely to hit the point where the increase in quality is sort-of pointless for most uses, but we're clearly not there yet. Maybe we would be if super-fast internet was consistently available almost everywhere for such a nominal price that the price is barely relevant.
That, too, will happen eventually. Mobile phones - a thing we laughed at people for thinking they were so special they needed one, just 25 years ago - have become ubiquitous. Desktops are getting more rare, and laptops are getting smaller, while tablets are increasing in size. The change from work outside the home to WFH or hybrid schedules may end up affecting it, too... who knows?
Me, I'm just busy being annoyed that e-paper tablets are still more expensive than I think they ought to be. I'd love an iPad with the screen of a Kindle, I just don't want to pay as much as an iPad for it.
posted by stormyteal at 9:27 PM on November 13, 2021 [5 favorites]
The specific answer regarding Windows is "because Microsoft gave up on the idea." They seemed to be going down the path towards phone/PC convergence with Windows Phone, and to be honest a lot of people (myself included) did not like what they were seeing. It's very difficult to design applications that work well both in the context of a small touch interface on a phone screen, and a big monitor with a keyboard and mouse. It's enough work, generally done by separate teams of developers, that it might as well be separate applications that share underlying components, rather than being a single app that tries to change its UI to do both paradigms well.
That said... Apple is probably the other player who has put a sizable investment into the concept. They seem to have toyed with the idea of an eventual iOS / iPadOS / MacOS convergence, although I think Microsoft's failure to execute on the concept might have taken some of the wind out of their sails. But they are probably the ones to watch if you are interested in such things. If they manage to continue evolving their own processor architecture, it's certainly possible that the higher-end iPhones might someday overlap the specs and capabilities of lower-end notebooks. Cooling and power dissipation are problems, although I tend to think these are more tractable than the software design issues. (It's not too hard to imagine Apple coming out with some sort of iPhone dock/cradle that would add cooling capacity to the docked phone, maybe by being in physical contact between the back of the phone and a big heatsink+fan or something.)
But it would be a bit of a bold move even for Apple, since if it worked out it would immediately cannibalize sales of their notebook computers and not obviously add many additional phone sales. They can get more money out of each customer if they get you to buy two (or three) devices, rather than one and some generic peripherals. So it's not entirely surprising they're not hurrying everyone towards a single-device converged future.
I'm not convinced the market is really there, at least in the short term, either. Notebooks have become small and light enough that I'm trying to remember the last time I really wanted a full-size laptop and didn't have one with me, but would have hypothetically had access to a keyboard/monitor/IO terminal that I trusted enough to jam my phone into. But maybe I'm missing the appeal or not the target market or something.
Anyway, tl;dr is that there's no real technical reason why this can't happen—a modern phone could certainly act as a low-end desktop computer with the right software built for it (see: Raspberry Pi desktop computers)—but the lack of a clear market or demand has seemingly kept them separate, with separate software stacks at the user-facing level.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:14 PM on November 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
That said... Apple is probably the other player who has put a sizable investment into the concept. They seem to have toyed with the idea of an eventual iOS / iPadOS / MacOS convergence, although I think Microsoft's failure to execute on the concept might have taken some of the wind out of their sails. But they are probably the ones to watch if you are interested in such things. If they manage to continue evolving their own processor architecture, it's certainly possible that the higher-end iPhones might someday overlap the specs and capabilities of lower-end notebooks. Cooling and power dissipation are problems, although I tend to think these are more tractable than the software design issues. (It's not too hard to imagine Apple coming out with some sort of iPhone dock/cradle that would add cooling capacity to the docked phone, maybe by being in physical contact between the back of the phone and a big heatsink+fan or something.)
But it would be a bit of a bold move even for Apple, since if it worked out it would immediately cannibalize sales of their notebook computers and not obviously add many additional phone sales. They can get more money out of each customer if they get you to buy two (or three) devices, rather than one and some generic peripherals. So it's not entirely surprising they're not hurrying everyone towards a single-device converged future.
I'm not convinced the market is really there, at least in the short term, either. Notebooks have become small and light enough that I'm trying to remember the last time I really wanted a full-size laptop and didn't have one with me, but would have hypothetically had access to a keyboard/monitor/IO terminal that I trusted enough to jam my phone into. But maybe I'm missing the appeal or not the target market or something.
Anyway, tl;dr is that there's no real technical reason why this can't happen—a modern phone could certainly act as a low-end desktop computer with the right software built for it (see: Raspberry Pi desktop computers)—but the lack of a clear market or demand has seemingly kept them separate, with separate software stacks at the user-facing level.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:14 PM on November 13, 2021 [1 favorite]
Actually it had been done several times before.
Motorola did a "lapdock" for its Droid Bionic and Atrix back in 2011 or so. It's a 11.5 in screen and keyboard. You dock the phone in the back, and you have an ersatz laptop, albeit very limited number of apps.
Technology is moving too fast though, with new phone released every year, and laptops, notebooks and ultrabooks released every 18-24 months...
There's also the fundamental problem of what sort of bus to interface between the phone and the "laptop", which is little more than screen and keyboard, while keeping it easy to dock, yet weather resistant.
posted by kschang at 12:18 AM on November 14, 2021
Motorola did a "lapdock" for its Droid Bionic and Atrix back in 2011 or so. It's a 11.5 in screen and keyboard. You dock the phone in the back, and you have an ersatz laptop, albeit very limited number of apps.
Technology is moving too fast though, with new phone released every year, and laptops, notebooks and ultrabooks released every 18-24 months...
There's also the fundamental problem of what sort of bus to interface between the phone and the "laptop", which is little more than screen and keyboard, while keeping it easy to dock, yet weather resistant.
posted by kschang at 12:18 AM on November 14, 2021
You could rent a VM from somewhere and just VNC/RDP to that. Would work for office-y/development things, but likely suck a bit for games or graphics-intensive work.
posted by pompomtom at 12:29 AM on November 14, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by pompomtom at 12:29 AM on November 14, 2021 [1 favorite]
What are the main technological obstacles stopping us from having a docking station which would take a smartphone and use it to run desktop Windows?
Very few. Windows on ARM is (still) a thing. Open phone hardware you can install whatever you like on is a thing. Video over USB-C is a thing.
The obstacles stopping us from having a docking station which would take a smartphone and use it to run not Windows, but a free Linux-based desktop OS? Only unfamiliarity, and a carefully inculcated mistrust of anything that claims to be free while inexplicably failing to involve the advertising industry.
posted by flabdablet at 3:27 AM on November 14, 2021
Very few. Windows on ARM is (still) a thing. Open phone hardware you can install whatever you like on is a thing. Video over USB-C is a thing.
The obstacles stopping us from having a docking station which would take a smartphone and use it to run not Windows, but a free Linux-based desktop OS? Only unfamiliarity, and a carefully inculcated mistrust of anything that claims to be free while inexplicably failing to involve the advertising industry.
posted by flabdablet at 3:27 AM on November 14, 2021
The use case for both are very different, when out and about a complex sequence of menus or command line arguments would be unworkable. Conversely the thumb swipe constraints of a phone interface would be limiting to say the least.
Open a shell on an android phone (don't recall ios) and type ls or pwd, is a unix box. But for security reasons it's extremely limited.
So one device would need two very different UI's, and one would also need the screen and keyboard.
Now data, that should be shared easily, do not get me started about how insane apple's restrictions to the data on the phone, it certainly should be secure but parts are brutal to even copy, grrrar needing to use the itunes program to move a file from a lap to the phone is insane.
posted by sammyo at 4:55 AM on November 14, 2021
Open a shell on an android phone (don't recall ios) and type ls or pwd, is a unix box. But for security reasons it's extremely limited.
So one device would need two very different UI's, and one would also need the screen and keyboard.
Now data, that should be shared easily, do not get me started about how insane apple's restrictions to the data on the phone, it certainly should be secure but parts are brutal to even copy, grrrar needing to use the itunes program to move a file from a lap to the phone is insane.
posted by sammyo at 4:55 AM on November 14, 2021
There are a number of linux versions of exactly this, and the article touches on some older approaches to the same idea. Since people have been trying to install Linux on hamsters for 25 years, that shouldn’t be so surprising. Linux runs on extremely small footprint devices, so the power / heat isn’t a problem other than the experience is sluggish. There are a number of practical problems, such as drivers for the various hardware. The overall user experience that makes sense on A phone is also just not the same as on a desktop.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 6:06 AM on November 14, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by a robot made out of meat at 6:06 AM on November 14, 2021 [1 favorite]
one device would need two very different UI's, and one would also need the screen and keyboard.
There's vast amounts of software designed for small touchscreens, and vast amounts designed for machines with more capable controls, and I can see absolutely no reason why the same hardware couldn't, in most cases, run both. At the same time, even.
Or the same apps, even: small touchscreen versions have been made for a lot of desktop apps, and it seems to me that if touchscreen and desktop apps were to run on the same OS, structured as two separate UI skins over a common underlying set of libraries, this would reduce rather than increase the effort required to develop the two.
I have never believed that "convergence" would mean that we're all forced to use a set of physical controls as utterly impoverished as a touchscreen for every conceivable computing task. Nice big clear screens and pointer controls that you can operating without occluding what you're looking at and keyboards you can enter text on without driving yourself completely insane are just better for any kind of sustained work.
But I can easily imagine convergence manifesting as a drift toward a new normal where everything is available in a version that runs as well on ARM and perhaps even on RISC-V as on x86-64, with Thunderbolt-dockable phones increasingly being used exactly as the OP envisions, displacing the traditional over-powered, electricity-hungry beasts at the centres of today's desktop workstations.
If we were to standardize on phones with a thin metal shell that all the internal heat sources are thermally coupled to, desktop docks could easily incorporate active cooling into their phone loading bays, keeping any docked phone well under its maximum operating temperature even with all parts of its SoC running continuously at 100% voom level.
Data sharing and open formats are the key to making all this work.
posted by flabdablet at 6:07 AM on November 14, 2021
There's vast amounts of software designed for small touchscreens, and vast amounts designed for machines with more capable controls, and I can see absolutely no reason why the same hardware couldn't, in most cases, run both. At the same time, even.
Or the same apps, even: small touchscreen versions have been made for a lot of desktop apps, and it seems to me that if touchscreen and desktop apps were to run on the same OS, structured as two separate UI skins over a common underlying set of libraries, this would reduce rather than increase the effort required to develop the two.
I have never believed that "convergence" would mean that we're all forced to use a set of physical controls as utterly impoverished as a touchscreen for every conceivable computing task. Nice big clear screens and pointer controls that you can operating without occluding what you're looking at and keyboards you can enter text on without driving yourself completely insane are just better for any kind of sustained work.
But I can easily imagine convergence manifesting as a drift toward a new normal where everything is available in a version that runs as well on ARM and perhaps even on RISC-V as on x86-64, with Thunderbolt-dockable phones increasingly being used exactly as the OP envisions, displacing the traditional over-powered, electricity-hungry beasts at the centres of today's desktop workstations.
If we were to standardize on phones with a thin metal shell that all the internal heat sources are thermally coupled to, desktop docks could easily incorporate active cooling into their phone loading bays, keeping any docked phone well under its maximum operating temperature even with all parts of its SoC running continuously at 100% voom level.
Data sharing and open formats are the key to making all this work.
posted by flabdablet at 6:07 AM on November 14, 2021
Perhaps a better question for this is... What exactly is the advantage of having a lapdock?
If you still have to carry the "shell" / "lapdock" around, which is the weight of an Chromebook, since it needs batteries and everything else, why not just carry an Chromebook? There is no weight savings.
As for "cost savings", there is none, not with smartphones going for above 1000 for the top models, and small Chromebooks or similar cheap Windows notebooks for like $200 or so, and these docks are so niche it'd cost well over $200 to produce them.
As for Windows ARM, they can only run 32-bit x86 Windows apps under emulation, unless the app was rebuilt for ARM32 or ARM64 (what Microsoft calls UWP). SOME support for 64-bit x86 emulation is being added, but it's experimental.
It's possible, but I personally see not many practical uses for it.
posted by kschang at 9:56 AM on November 14, 2021
If you still have to carry the "shell" / "lapdock" around, which is the weight of an Chromebook, since it needs batteries and everything else, why not just carry an Chromebook? There is no weight savings.
As for "cost savings", there is none, not with smartphones going for above 1000 for the top models, and small Chromebooks or similar cheap Windows notebooks for like $200 or so, and these docks are so niche it'd cost well over $200 to produce them.
As for Windows ARM, they can only run 32-bit x86 Windows apps under emulation, unless the app was rebuilt for ARM32 or ARM64 (what Microsoft calls UWP). SOME support for 64-bit x86 emulation is being added, but it's experimental.
It's possible, but I personally see not many practical uses for it.
posted by kschang at 9:56 AM on November 14, 2021
Smartphones use a smartphone CPU chip and it wouldn't know how to run Windows. Hardware varies, and there may not be a driver (software) to use it.
Androids use the Google OS, similar to the OS on Chrome tablets, There are tablet phones that are pretty competent.
I know a few people who use an MS Surface, can attach a keyboard, external monitor, etc., has a touchscreen, probably can't urn phone apps. With Google Voice or similar, it can be an IP phone.
I know several people who use the web only on a smartphone, not my preference.
The convergence I want is predictive text on my PC and an emulator to run android apps on my pc.
posted by theora55 at 10:01 AM on November 14, 2021
Androids use the Google OS, similar to the OS on Chrome tablets, There are tablet phones that are pretty competent.
I know a few people who use an MS Surface, can attach a keyboard, external monitor, etc., has a touchscreen, probably can't urn phone apps. With Google Voice or similar, it can be an IP phone.
I know several people who use the web only on a smartphone, not my preference.
The convergence I want is predictive text on my PC and an emulator to run android apps on my pc.
posted by theora55 at 10:01 AM on November 14, 2021
don't know the technological limitations, but I'm keen to learn where the main obstacles to this lie.
CPU instruction set architecture, primarily (and thus, heat). There are two main competing ones. x86/x64 is the dominant one for desktop and laptop PCs and has been for a very long time, while ARM is dominant for smartphones and tablets.
To simplify massively, there are two conflicting goals - high performance, and power efficiency. x86/x64 is what is used by intel and AMD for their PC processors and allows for more complex instructions per CPU cycle, and thus higher performance; while ARM chips do short and simple instructions which are very power efficient in comparison. More performance also means more heat, as a rule, more so for x86/x64 systems.
Obviously there has an ongoing race to make x86/x64 more power efficient, while making ARM chips more performant. Apple has been designing their own ARM chips for iphones/ipads for a while now, and recently switched their laptops and imacs over as well - the M1 chips (and versions thereof) replace intel x64 cpus with ARM chips of their own design, descended from the previous work. So now they have very power efficient chips that are also high(ish) performance; more so than 'low-power' intel equivalents. Intel is really struggling with the underlying manufacturing improvements (node size) to compete on power efficiency, so the future is looking increasingly like ARM will win on both counts, for anything that runs off a battery at the very least. AMD has been making strides, but even their most power-efficient chips are still an order of magitude higher draw than ARM; it does seem it's going to be easier to scale ARM performance further up than make x64 more efficient.
Microsoft though, has stuck almost exclusively to x86/x64 for some decades, and so is pretty much all the software intended to run on it. While Windows on ARM exists, it's very much a poor relation to the x86/x64 version; and running software on it that wasn't designed for ARM requires an emulation layer, which slows performance and sometimes blocks it working entirely. Apple have the same problem, having also switched from x86/64 to ARM - but since they've gone all in on ARM now, software vendors are expected to recompile their software to run natively, and the 3rd party software market is much smaller on macOS vs the decades of windows dominance, so the transition is well under way.
So running a full Desktop PC off a smartphone is possible; Apple could release an ipad form factor running macOS right now if they chose to (the latest macbooks are not far off this internally, just with a physical keyboard and bigger screen/battery), and probably even an iphone; heat is the limiting factor, and the smaller your physical device, the harder to deal with. But they'd rather keep the split of touch-orientated iOS for portable devices, and a desktop OS for bigger devices rather than one that has both and can switch; so the limitation is design intent, rather than really technical. There have been attempts with android or linux desktops on phones (samsung dex for example), but they have not been terribly succesful.
Running *windows* on a phone-sized device though, probably not until windows on ARM is not a poor relation, or intel pulls their finger out. Surface tablets are about as close as you can get - a laptop with detachable keyboard, effectively - which are about as power efficient as intel chips get, and they just can't shrink smaller due primarily to heat. They'd also have to work out how you're going to use the phone as an actual phone, as microsoft have made repeated attempts at small-screen versions of windows suitable for finger use, and they have all failed miserably; these days they sell android phones running microsoft apps (office etc) instead.
In other words; don't hold your breath for a desktop/phone hybrid running windows.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 10:43 AM on November 14, 2021
CPU instruction set architecture, primarily (and thus, heat). There are two main competing ones. x86/x64 is the dominant one for desktop and laptop PCs and has been for a very long time, while ARM is dominant for smartphones and tablets.
To simplify massively, there are two conflicting goals - high performance, and power efficiency. x86/x64 is what is used by intel and AMD for their PC processors and allows for more complex instructions per CPU cycle, and thus higher performance; while ARM chips do short and simple instructions which are very power efficient in comparison. More performance also means more heat, as a rule, more so for x86/x64 systems.
Obviously there has an ongoing race to make x86/x64 more power efficient, while making ARM chips more performant. Apple has been designing their own ARM chips for iphones/ipads for a while now, and recently switched their laptops and imacs over as well - the M1 chips (and versions thereof) replace intel x64 cpus with ARM chips of their own design, descended from the previous work. So now they have very power efficient chips that are also high(ish) performance; more so than 'low-power' intel equivalents. Intel is really struggling with the underlying manufacturing improvements (node size) to compete on power efficiency, so the future is looking increasingly like ARM will win on both counts, for anything that runs off a battery at the very least. AMD has been making strides, but even their most power-efficient chips are still an order of magitude higher draw than ARM; it does seem it's going to be easier to scale ARM performance further up than make x64 more efficient.
Microsoft though, has stuck almost exclusively to x86/x64 for some decades, and so is pretty much all the software intended to run on it. While Windows on ARM exists, it's very much a poor relation to the x86/x64 version; and running software on it that wasn't designed for ARM requires an emulation layer, which slows performance and sometimes blocks it working entirely. Apple have the same problem, having also switched from x86/64 to ARM - but since they've gone all in on ARM now, software vendors are expected to recompile their software to run natively, and the 3rd party software market is much smaller on macOS vs the decades of windows dominance, so the transition is well under way.
So running a full Desktop PC off a smartphone is possible; Apple could release an ipad form factor running macOS right now if they chose to (the latest macbooks are not far off this internally, just with a physical keyboard and bigger screen/battery), and probably even an iphone; heat is the limiting factor, and the smaller your physical device, the harder to deal with. But they'd rather keep the split of touch-orientated iOS for portable devices, and a desktop OS for bigger devices rather than one that has both and can switch; so the limitation is design intent, rather than really technical. There have been attempts with android or linux desktops on phones (samsung dex for example), but they have not been terribly succesful.
Running *windows* on a phone-sized device though, probably not until windows on ARM is not a poor relation, or intel pulls their finger out. Surface tablets are about as close as you can get - a laptop with detachable keyboard, effectively - which are about as power efficient as intel chips get, and they just can't shrink smaller due primarily to heat. They'd also have to work out how you're going to use the phone as an actual phone, as microsoft have made repeated attempts at small-screen versions of windows suitable for finger use, and they have all failed miserably; these days they sell android phones running microsoft apps (office etc) instead.
In other words; don't hold your breath for a desktop/phone hybrid running windows.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 10:43 AM on November 14, 2021
You can use a bluetooth keyboard and bluetooth mouse with Android, but wired video output is...spotty. Apparently IOS has support, I think, though it requires some combination of adapters to connect to a USB-C display, which is the linchpin. I can't find any indication that an iPhone can connect to something like the old Apple Thunderbolt Display using its Lightning port.
posted by rhizome at 1:02 PM on November 14, 2021
posted by rhizome at 1:02 PM on November 14, 2021
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by dobbs at 6:17 PM on November 13, 2021 [2 favorites]