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Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

charlieharrington.com

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Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#111

Post by crooked-v »

sixty4bit wrote: post #76

This is nice and all, but what I am waiting for is the phone to power my desktop setup. I walk up, drop the phone into a dock, and my three 27" monitors all wake up with the desktop exactly as I left it. To get there I think the GPU will have to be embedded in the monitors, and some interesting operating system hoops will have to be jumped through. Do cords have enough bandwidth now to support this? I honestly don't…

> To get there I think the GPU will have to be embedded in the monitors

Rumors say Apple is working on a monitor with an A13 chip embedded in it for something like this kind of usage.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#112

Post by smoldesu »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #93
reportgunner wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why even plug a phone at all ? Scan your retina and have the screens broadcast your zero latency always on desktop running in the cloud that seamlessly updates, never has to stop or reboot and backs up every single interaction you have done in the past decade. The screens turn off and disconnect as you walk away and reconnect to your phone (now merely a pocket-screen) with all applications adapting to whatever size o…

>phone desktop >cloud desktop Please kill me. :)

Cloud desktops are going to be mainstream long before phone desktops will be a thing, at least at the rate Apple is moving.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#113

Post by smoldesu »

This is neat, but both Android and iPhone are really poor choices if you're looking to travel with a computer. Particularly on the iPhone side of things, you're basically screwed if you lose your network connection, since you aren't going to be doing many interesting things with the local shell. Android is a little better, but you'll still end up SSHing into another machine to get any valuable work done.

Good, cheap x86 laptops are like $80 right now. That's about how much you'd pay for one of those fancy Logitech keyboards, but it comes with an entire computer, too.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#114

Post by tristor »

sixty4bit wrote: post #76

This is nice and all, but what I am waiting for is the phone to power my desktop setup. I walk up, drop the phone into a dock, and my three 27" monitors all wake up with the desktop exactly as I left it. To get there I think the GPU will have to be embedded in the monitors, and some interesting operating system hoops will have to be jumped through. Do cords have enough bandwidth now to support this? I honestly don't…

The Steam Deck promises this, and it's a big reason why I reserved one. I think this could be integrated nicely into my daily web-centric workflow.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#115

Post by com2kid »

sixty4bit wrote: post #76

This is nice and all, but what I am waiting for is the phone to power my desktop setup. I walk up, drop the phone into a dock, and my three 27" monitors all wake up with the desktop exactly as I left it. To get there I think the GPU will have to be embedded in the monitors, and some interesting operating system hoops will have to be jumped through. Do cords have enough bandwidth now to support this? I honestly don't…

> This is nice and all, but what I am waiting for is the phone to power my desktop setup. I walk up, drop the phone into a dock, and my three 27" monitors all wake up with the desktop exactly as I left it.

This has been attempted multiple times. (Motorola's go at it and Windows Phone are two recent attempts that come to mind) Each time it has failed.

Reasons:

1. The upgrade cycle on phones is much shorter than on laptops/desktops.

2. Phone manufacturers want you to use their own proprietary docks, which means investing in their ecosystem, which is a non-starter for most people, especially since history shows such products will be discontinued after one, maybe two, generations. The investment just isn't worth it. (chicken and egg problem here).

3. Corporations already have fine grained infrastructure in place to manage Mac/PCs, and employees are pretty used to it. Of course your work laptop has restrictions on what you can do, and corporate VPN software, etc etc. People generally expect their phones to belong to them, they tolerate PIN policies and remote wiping, but that is about it. Newer android versions do support a dual work/personal mode, but that still isn't on the level of what exists in the Mac/PC management space.

4. Thermal limits are a thing.

5. Related to #4, pushing a phone at its limits all day long will shorten its usable lifespan. LiON batteries don't enjoy living next a hot CPU that's running at full load for hours on end.

As for cords, thunderbolt will take care of your bandwidth needs. Even USB 3.2 (I think that's the right version?) can handle dual screens, USB 4 can certainly handle it.

Is it doable with todays tech? Of course. Is it even more doable with some sort of cloud compute dumb terminal setup? Naturally, could have done that a decade+ ago.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#116

Post by maccolgan »

adkadskhj wrote: post #99

Man, a personal hosted VPN for all my junk is my dream. Can't wait to get something selfhosted, tail-scail-like setup. Something i can get into from anywhere and work from anything. I'm tempted to order a bluetooth keyboard like this post just to have it in the car and be able to work from my iPad/iPhone in a pinch (assuming internet). For someone wanting an easy, at home VPN for setups just like in the blog - is any…

Zerotier?

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#117

Post by tluyben2 »

timonoko wrote: post #23
teekert wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait until they pass 35 and find that getting up and moving about is not just an annoyance but vital to keeping your body away from a state of constant little nagging pains ;)

Shutup son. I am 69. But I cannot type with my thumbs, like people under 30. I need always two hands to use the phone.

I can type with my thumbs but it's far slower than using my left thumb and right index finger. I am almost 50.

However, what does that have to do with 2 handed use? Thumbs typing is also 2 hands. Or you mean typing with 1 thumb? I see people, especially Chinese, writing on their phones with 1 thumb and holding it with the same hand (so 1 hand use); you have that too with swipe keyboards though for western languages. This us definitely not faster (or, for me, nicer) than just typing with 1 thumb and 1 finger.

Curious what other people do... I am on a tetras on a busy street now and wasting what (very) young people do: I see them all typing with 2 hands, two thumbs.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#118

Post by tluyben2 »

teekert wrote: post #27
timonoko wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shutup son. I am 69. But I cannot type with my thumbs, like people under 30. I need always two hands to use the phone.

I'm still wishing for T9 to come back... Every generation has its thing. Maybe it's time to try dictation and get past the feelings of silliness ;)

Not sure how that works with a lot of noise and people (subway, busy streets, airplanes etc); it seems to type out complete crap random people around me are shouting. So in reality touchtyping is faster.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#119

Post by rambambram »

dTal wrote: post #51
aftergibson wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick question, what about the Cosmo didn’t work that worked on the GPD Micro? Was the keyboard problematic on the Cosmo?

There were lots and lots of problems with the Cosmo as a phone, build quality first and foremost, but I'll focus on the screen/keyboard combo since that's the point of comparison with the GPD. First, the keyboard: The Cosmo keyboard is not designed for thumb typing. You can do it, but it's a bit awkward. The phone is not comfortable to hold in this configuration - it's thin, wide, top heavy, and the hinge has sharp e…

Thanks indeed for the review! I came across these devices once, and I always wondered if it was more gadget-like, or really useful. Have you tried running Ubuntu MATE on it?

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#120

Post by dTal »

rambambram wrote: post #119
dTal wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were lots and lots of problems with the Cosmo as a phone, build quality first and foremost, but I'll focus on the screen/keyboard combo since that's the point of comparison with the GPD. First, the keyboard: The Cosmo keyboard is not designed for thumb typing. You can do it, but it's a bit awkward. The phone is not comfortable to hold in this configuration - it's thin, wide, top heavy, and the hinge has sharp e…

Thanks indeed for the review! I came across these devices once, and I always wondered if it was more gadget-like, or really useful. Have you tried running Ubuntu MATE on it?

On which, the Cosmo or the MicroPC?

I was never brave enough to tinker with GNU/Linux on the Cosmo while it was my daily driver. I'm pretty sure that using the device that way comes with some pretty sever compromises.

On the Micro PC, I run Void Linux with KDE Plasma. I didn't do anything special, everything's mainline, so I'm sure at a technical level Ubuntu MATE would work perfectly well. The only interface tweaks I've made are to set the task manager to "icons only" to save space and added thermal/RAM/CPU monitors in the taskbar.

As for "toy gadget" vs "useful tool", I'd say that if you're the kind of person who likes to take your laptop everywhere, it's definitely for you.

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