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Last night, London-based makers of popular Linux OS Ubuntu, Canonical, unleashed a mobile version of Ubuntu which also provides options to dock and give you a desktop experience. Even if it ultimately doesn’t work, this is an important innovation because phone/desktop hybrids are quite possibly where the future of computing lies — one device to rule them all, one device to–oh, you get the idea.
This isn’t the first device to try the phone/desktop hybrid. Back in 2006, an Intel/Microsoft/Samsung love-in launched Project Origami, the first of the true Ultra-Mobile PCs — 5-inch touchscreen Windows-running portable handsets. Though they were the first devices that promised desktop-level performance in a vaguely smartphone-shaped shell, they were worryingly terrible. Unresponsive and bulky, they tried to create a market for something that just plain didn’t exist. Ok, so they can have credit for trying ‘original’ things with form factors — like this — but it’s no real surprise they didn’t exactly hit the mainstream.
A few years later, with UMPCs nothing but laughable memories, we’re seeing more realistic attempts to make the desktop mobile. CES 2011 saw the Motorola Atrix land — an Android-running smartphone that had a laptop dock. Plug the phone into the laptop dock, and you basically get yourself a netbook. (Interestingly, the desktop interface was based on Ubuntu, similar to Canonical’s new announcement.)
The concept is superb. Rather than having to mess around with good but ultimately finnicky cross-device syncing services (Dropbox, Google Drive etc), you can take your entire computing world seamlessly from a full-fat desktop experience straight to your pocket. It’s an awesome, revolutionary concept, but one that the Atrix sadly failed to deliver. Desktop-like performance was actually more steam-powered-netbook-style performance, and the software meant that you couldn’t easily pick up on the desktop interface where you left off on the mobile. A good piece of hardware, then, just sadly let down by half-arsed software.
Another attempt at this kind of device is the Asus PadFone. A less ambitious project, it consists of a high-powered Android smartphone that slots into a “dumb” tablet — basically just an external screen and battery. Although it doesn’t show any innovation on the software front, the PadFone showed good promise for hardware, and is now actually in its second generation, rather than being discarded after feeble sales like so many other concepts. Significantly, though, it’s shown that there is demand and interest in bringing down the number of devices you have to carry around.
So, that brings us on to the present day. Linux’s offering to the mobile space is most significant because of the software it offers. A mobile OS that also offers a fully-fledged desktop, all unlocked and ready for hardware manufacturers is a huge step forward. At present, developing devices like the Atrix takes ridiculous amounts of money and effort, even for the largest of firms, requiring months and years of costly software development.
But the time is getting ever more right for one device that can do all things. The divide in processing power between smartphones, tablets and laptops is getting ever smaller, and we’re approaching the point where they’ll all be able to run the same software, just with different user interfaces. Windows 8, with all its buttery Metro goodness, is a clear sign of this.
Another warning sign is the desktop features that Google saw fit to build into Android 4.0. Though not widely advertised, Google built in all sorts of little hooks for a keyboard and trackpad combo that makes it a pretty slick experience. Plainly, then, even Google wants you to use your quad-core Android behemoth as a desktop replacement.
My real hope for Canonical’s Linux/Android offering, then, is not that it will straight away produce awesome phone/desktop hybrids. It probably won’t. But if it spurs a few mainstream manufacturers into building Atrix rivals, we could finally be seeing the holy grail of computing. Who would’ve guessed it would look like Linux?
Desktop, rest…..in….peace (with the professional Undertaker accent from WWE in case you don’t know this tall freaky goth badass geezer!)
The problem is we already have better devices for this and they’re called Desktops.
Define better. Sorry to be “that guy” but a phone has enough power for around 80% of the population to be a viable all in one, add in the portability and the convenience of it and I think it could take off.
As for the rest of us 20% who do lots of image/video editing, software development or music production, well, we can keep using our desktops/proper laptops.
only problem is the resolution is shite
No, it’s too little too late. One of the good things about Ubuntu is that you can dualboot it with Windows. Can you dualboot Ubuntu mobile with Android straight away? No. Why would you choose Ubuntu over Android? Even Ubuntu for Android is backwards. An awesome idea would be plugging your phone into your Ubuntu computer and use your apps on it. Using your phone as your computer is just silly, how are you supposed to use both at once?
Even the UI is bad, no “desktop”, their crappy universal search, the whole thing controlled by swipe gestures and the status bar autohides? No thankyou!
This whole mobile-desktop convergence idea has a fatal flaw – it forces you to be using either one or the other.
I don’t want to have to pick my phone out of a docking station, and not be able to continue working, because I need to take a phone call or send someone a text.
That would just be persistently, highly, irritating.
Sure – I could make the text without removing it. But with texting that would remove all the privacy and intimacy of writing, sending and reading them (do you really want your texts on a 23″ screen for the world to see? No me neither). And with calling, I would need a headset device of some kind. Which would probably be shaped like a phone. Which forgive me, but I think that would defeat the entire point.
I, and I suspect most other people, need to be able to operate a phone and a computer separately and independently. I really don’t see how making your phone your computer is therefore a sensible or feasible idea.
Your argument has a fatal flaw your limiting yourself to the fact that this device will have to be physically connected. What if it bring up a little notification at the bottom of your screen saying call and then you can pick it up while still carrying on with your work using wifi etc . Anyway the headset thing would most likely be a bluetooth headset of some sort. Since voice recognition is most likely the next big human interface for technology it may not bee too far where most computers ship with headsets as long as voice recognition improves
Good point, and although I’m sure that’s completely possible, I’m not aware any current solution offers this. There must be a good reason why, with the padfone for example, the phone has to be plugged into a physical port on the tablet. That must mean that when you remove it, the tablet stops working.
Maybe the technology just isn’t there yet.
I also still feel my issues about a mobile phone being an entirely different device in a psychological manner to a desktop. We’re talking here about smashing together one device that is deeply personal and secretive, and a device that is almost completely public in its use.
I’m just not sure people want that, or at least, are ready for it.
At the very least, I’d want my desktop environment to be entirely separate to my mobile.
Well I hope it isn’t public after all I watch a lot of porn…..HAHAHA
I must congratulate you in fitting the world into your study/computer room.
I’ve always been against too much convergence, sometimes you need more than one device