The Atrix and the Future of Docking Phone - Netbooks

[Eyeless Blond]

The way the Atrix lapdock looks seems to be an enormous missed opportunity to me. Would it not be better to slide the phone in front of the dock, and let the phone take the place of the trackpad? Heck, while it's there it can be the trackpad, and a smaller second screen at the same time, all the while saving the back of the device for a second (backup) battery.

Heck, even better: make the back of the phone out of aluminum, and have it hook up to a Peltier cooler/heatsink combo, so you can upclock the phone while it's docked.

What do you think would be the best way to converge a phone form-factor and a netbook form-factor?

 

[Matt1970]

It seems like the only real difference between that and connecting to your PC via USB is the direct access to your aps. Most phone aps are limited compared to what you can do on the PC anyways, so what's the point?

 

[firewolfsm]

The future of docking is this, in five years, the average smartphone will be at least as fast as a lynfield quad core. If you don't believe me, consider that the quad core tegra coming out in phones by december is a touch faster (in terms of transistor count, MIPS, FLOPS, and bandwidth) than the older, 90nm Core2Duos, which came out in 2007. What will we do with that kind of processing in our pockets? It won't be power hungry because we'll have 14nm transistors, the crunch before 3d, molecular computing.

I actually expect that many libraries and schools will start having docks available for use at tables, you plug in, get ethernet access, keyboard, monitor, etc. Phones should have a mobile and docked UI for the os separate. If that doesn't happen yet, the phones will definitely begin to displace desktops and laptops for more people. A 13" monitor+keyboard+phone could weigh less than two pounds, with a small battery maybe 5x phone capacity inside.

 

[Matt1970]

The Tegra Quads will be in tablets as soon as August. Those will be cool as hell but I wouldn't bet the farm that smartphones will displace laptops. It really all depends on your needs and size vs function compromise. Some people find them too small and a lot more likely to drop than a laptop. For a lot of people screen size is everything.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

The future of docking is this, in five years, the average smartphone will be at least as fast as a lynfield quad core. If you don't believe me, consider that the quad core tegra coming out in phones by december is a touch faster (in terms of transistor count, MIPS, FLOPS, and bandwidth) than the older, 90nm Core2Duos, which came out in 2007. What will we do with that kind of processing in our pockets? It won't be power hungry because we'll have 14nm transistors, the crunch before 3d, molecular computing.

I actually expect that many libraries and schools will start having docks available for use at tables, you plug in, get ethernet access, keyboard, monitor, etc. Phones should have a mobile and docked UI for the os separate. If that doesn't happen yet, the phones will definitely begin to displace desktops and laptops for more people. A 13" monitor+keyboard+phone could weigh less than two pounds, with a small battery maybe 5x phone capacity inside.

Tegra 3 will definitely not be faster than a Core 2 Duo considering Tegra 2 is much slower than an Intel Atom.

 

[exdeath]

Why is there a mouse pad? Android doesn't have a cursor?

 

[Eyeless Blond]

Why is there a mouse pad? Android doesn't have a cursor?

The Atrix seems to use a customized Ubuntu distribution when docked, so it has a trackpad. It seems like that would be the obvious place to put the phone, rather than having it dangle off the back.

 

[Anteaus]

I have a Atrix 4G. It's a solid phone in it's own right, but I think it's ability to dock is a bit overrated at this point. It does have good email support as well as a office productivity suite so I guess it could be useful if your own the move, but my guess is you'd have a laptop if you did that type of business travel.