When Your Mobile is Your Computer at MobHappy

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I wrote last week comparing the mobile with the computer, concluding that for most things, the computer was still better. However, I also believe that our phones will turn into our computers and be our primary digital device.
Someone left a comment challenging me on this, which is great, as I love comments and the debate surrounding them. They pointed out that for some jobs, like desktop publishing or website design, a mobile screen and tiny little keyboard will just never hack it.
So let me explain more.
My vision is that our mobiles are going to morph into something like our digital, thin client, key to our digital data, as well as a communication device. Sometimes we’ll access that data directly, as it’s stored on our phones - much as we might keep games on there today. And some will be stored on the web, so we’ll use our phones as a way of accessing and unlocking this data.
And yes, sometimes, we’ll need to see that data on a larger screen and use more sophisticated tools to manipulate it - a keyboard and mouse and whatever comes next in that line. But rather than go to a computer, we’ll slot our mobiles into a docking port in a keyboard/screen combo. These already exist in early iterations, as I’ve written before.
But how about when you want to give a presentation, you’ll still need a laptop, won’t you? Actually, no. You’ll have the presentation on your phone, or stored on the web and accessed live with your phone. And you’ll plug it into a projector, specially made for the purpose.
Sound far fetched? Well, you can get a glimpse of that future with the Project-a-Phone - yours for a mere $199.
The only slight issue is that you still need to connect it to a computer in order to project your mobile phone’s screen, but hey, it’s a great start.
But it’s a definite boon to all of us who have to demo mobile phones, applications and games to more than one person at a time. Cool.

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5 Responses to “When Your Mobile is Your Computer”
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1 Shermozle Mar 29th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
I’m about to go travelling for eight months without a computer, just my Nokia 6630. Shall be interesting to see how it goes.
I’ll be checking email on the phone, and also blogging from it. Anything more complicated than looking up the weather will probably mean an internet cafe though.
2 Rachelle-Joanne Mar 29th, 2006 at 6:39 pm
Hi! I’m just a new blogger and I just stumbled across your site and I really like it. I read your post on computers vs moblie phones. I believe that nothing is impossible with the technology we have today. For a mobile phone to serve as a personal computer, I don’t think its far fetched.We just have to wait and see it unfold before our very eyes.
3 Liam @ Web 2.5 Blog Mar 29th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
There’s another way to leverage a mobile phone for general-purpose computing: add to it a lightweight web server, driving nearby browsers via wi-fi, bluetooth, or UWB. Intel has prototyped this very thing. Near term, it looks like flash drives will become pocket servers sooner than phones.
I cover this space on my blog, Web 2.5: The Always-On-You Webhttp://web2dot5.blogspot.com/
4 Malcolm Mar 29th, 2006 at 10:52 pm
The Nokia N80, which is almost here, already does a lot of this sort of thing via its UPnP capabilities. For example, if you have a media streamer connected to an entertainment system (inc. TV), then the N80 can stream its media to this over its WiFi interface. Of course, this is focused on media, rather than business applications (such as presentations), but there’s no reason that clever companies can’t start embedding OpenOffice in their media streamers (companies like D-Link already use Linux on their devices), and then we can stream presentations or even documents from our phone, without even taking it out of our pocket.
Now this is exciting stuff, and it’s available around about now. Much more impressive than a flash drive.
(I already use my P910i as a word-processor with my Think Outside Stowaway Bluetooth keyboard — all it needs is a bigger display, and an HD TV would be fine for that — just need the protocols to stream video — hey! we’ve got them…)
5 Anon Mar 29th, 2006 at 11:53 pm
Impatica ShowMate lets you hook your BlackBerry up to a projector (maybe via Bluetooth now too):http://www.impatica.com/showmate/index.html