David Pogue has written up A Phone That’s the Life of a Laptop and takes a look at the pros and cons of the Motorola Atrix 4G. I love the theory behind the idea and can see why Motorola wants to do this, but I already have a netbook that can run Android and never go near the Android side. When I use a laptop, I want to do laptop stuff on it and a phone is for phone stuff. If a way can be found to integrate the two operating systems then that would be a killer idea. Thanks to Shofar.
“The laptop looks and feels like a black MacBook Air: 2.4 pounds, all cool brushed aluminum. The flat-topped keys poke up through the aluminum — again, very MacBook Airish. They’re slightly smaller than standard size, but still fine for rapid touch-typing.
The best thing about the whole phone-laptop concept is that you don’t have to think. You can pop the phone into the laptop, or yank it out, without shutting it down or entering any kind of special mode.
After about 10 seconds, whatever was on the phone’s screen appears on the laptop’s screen. It’s wild: you actually see your phone in a window. All of the buttons and icons are clickable with the trackpad clicker. You can even make phone calls in this setup — the laptop becomes a speakerphone. It’s a crazy, mind-blowing experience.”
This reminds me of the Palm Foleo. But maybe this will work.
In fact it reminds me of the imate Legionnaire. This was a touch screen phone which could dock into a laptop shell called the imate Warrior, converting it into the touchpad of the notebook, and supplying the processing power. Exactly the same concept, but I think better executed. Sadly it never came to market but was only ever shown in prototype.
This is getting closer to what I’ve been harping on about all these years. Your phone is the central device which you dock to a bigger screen, keyboard, memory etc. In this case a laptop.