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The Superbook: Turn your smartphone into a laptop for $99

kickstarter.com

21–30 of 140 posts

Re: The Superbook: Turn your smartphone into a laptop for $99

#21
How many times do we have to watch this exact kickstarter project fail to deliver? There have been countless made for phones, raspberry pis, and tablets. Maybe they'll ship, but the ux is trash especially considering you can get a chromebook for $100 more.

What is the actual benefit of this device? Instead of toting around a chromebook, you tote around the shell of a chromebook? My laptop is never 'out of sync' that problem was fixed years ago. IF I wanted laptop productivity I'd... use a laptop?

Re: The Superbook: Turn your smartphone into a laptop for $99

#23
This reminds me a lot of the Palm Foleo, a device I worked on ten years ago. It was mini-laptop sized, designed to be a phone companion, but it worked over Bluetooth and actually ran its own applications, just using the BT connection for continual data sync. This one has a much better chance of actually shipping, and the advance of computing power has made it a lot more viable. Good luck.

Re: The Superbook: Turn your smartphone into a laptop for $99

#24
post #10

MSFT has the "phone becomes a computer" with Continuum already: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/Continuum (but you need a Lumia... :| ) Having a laptop form factor is very interesting though - it brings in a lot of questions too. Is it a dumb peripheral? What does it need access to on the phone?

It's one of the main points to Ubuntu Phones as well, convergence from phone/tablet to desktop. Plug it in and use it as a full scale desktop experience. It's only available on the newer models as the entire system is beta and under testing though.

Very cool, thanks.

There's definitely a marketing bridge to cross here - when Steve Jobs released the iPhone, it wasn't "your iPod as a phone!", it was "here's a magical device that does things you never imagined were possible".

I've yet to hear a good pitch for any of these systems that appeals broadly outside of tech. =/

Re: The Superbook: Turn your smartphone into a laptop for $99

#25
This is something I think Apple should focus on. Well maybe after the car they are building.

They already control both hardware and software aspects of their devices, so compared to other companies, they are in the best position to make it so that all their devices are basically the same device, only with a different interface and form factor.

This doesn't mean they shouldn't work separately - if I'm playing a game on my computer, I still want to be able to text using my phone. But if I just arrived home and I was in the middle of a conversation, while reading an article, I want to be able to put both on my computer screen in a flick of a finger.

It looked as though as it was going to happen a few years back, when several companies tried to do something like this (Asus, Motorola) but now it looks like the idea was abandoned.

Re: The Superbook: Turn your smartphone into a laptop for $99

#26
I'm curious how much removing the cpu and graphics chip from a laptop shaves off the price. Chromebooks all already near this price range, and they work as standalone devices, which is nice.

I'm picturing myself at the airport awkwardly plugging my phone into my laptop, and trying to find a good place to sit it next to me.

Re: The Superbook: Turn your smartphone into a laptop for $99

#29

Motorola did this 5 years ago. Nobody cared. http://www.digitaltrends.com/buying-guides/a-complete-guide-... I think the main problem is who wants to carry around a laptop that you have to plug your phone in to use? That's a pretty big "Accessory." I mean, if you already are carrying something around as big as a laptop, why cripple it with phone hardware? I think a more compelling use-case would be a phone dock video…

[deleted]

Re: The Superbook: Turn your smartphone into a laptop for $99

#30
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one of the main points to Ubuntu Phones as well, convergence from phone/tablet to desktop. Plug it in and use it as a full scale desktop experience. It's only available on the newer models as the entire system is beta and under testing though.

Very cool, thanks. There's definitely a marketing bridge to cross here - when Steve Jobs released the iPhone, it wasn't "your iPod as a phone!", it was "here's a magical device that does things you never imagined were possible". I've yet to hear a good pitch for any of these systems that appeals broadly outside of tech. =/

I don't find extremely compelling arguments, but there's points to be made. Having a phone that's also your computer is convenient, so having a desktop/laptop dock for your phone that would seemlessly interface would be an interesting take. Remove the $900 work laptop and instead purchase a smartphone capable of everything you need for your business. Most employers provide smartphones already, so if you can manage the ecosystem for the company standards, you could effectively cut your costs in half for every employee.

Plus, licensing costs would also drop, having only one device rather than two. A phone that requires a license on top of the work computer is just doubling cost. A single device has a single license.

Honestly, I see how it could be useful, but the arguments aren't exactly convincing. At a personal level, I could see how a strong smartphone could be beneficial to have as a simple docking solution whether I go to work or home, plus constantly having it charged would be nice- Those lapdocks have batteries that charge the phone while it operates, same for desktop dock solutions.

All in all, I'd buy into it if I liked the ecosystem the phone offered at every level- but now you need to convince me on how the application offering is for Android/iOs/Windows/Ubuntu on likely ARM devices in terms of mobile applications, scaling up to desktop applications.

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