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Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

charlieharrington.com

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Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#81

Post by emilecantin »

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…

Funnily enough, you can kinda already do this with a USB-C dock. I have one for my MacBook Pro, and when I plugged my phone in it launched a desktop interface that ran on my phone. It could only use one screen, though.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#82

Post by stonemetal12 »

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…

I am really hoping the steam deck gets close to that.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#83

Post by chronogram »

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…

I don’t know why you’d want that. The place where I have my big monitor is where I also have the space for a computer that has enough room to be always fast and quiet for my tasks that I can leave running things, while my phone is something that I need for communication which can help with information/scheduling and that I would like to have with me at all times. Having all my work on my phone would make me leave that phone at home and get an extra phone, I just wouldn’t trust myself with all that even if I have backups.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#84

Post by dTal »

kilroy123 wrote: post #62
dTal wrote: post #41

I got a GPD Micro PC a couple months ago and I'm in love. It's a magical size - exactly small enough to slip into a back pocket like a chunky phone, and exactly large enough that it's actually practical to use desktop software on it. It's ergonomically first-rate - I've done CAD work on it. And it's durable too - I've dropped it several times already and it's barely even scratched. It's also unlocked a class of activ…

What model do you have? It seems pretty under powered to me. What exactly do you do on it?

N4120 model.

Quad core and 8gb of RAM is underpowered? It's not the best gaming machine to be sure, and I have to be a little more careful with my browser tabs than on my 64GB workstation... but there's not really anything glaring it outright can't do.

Hard to answer what I do on it, since the answer is "everything". I run Plasma 5 on mine. Right now I have a lot of firefox windows open, Quassel (IRC), Qalculate, some file managers, some terminals, and some text editors. For heavy duty I sometimes remote into my workstation (graphically) which is fast enough on a LAN to use CAD and all the rest of it. I've even done ANSYS simulations this way.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#85

Post by fsflover »

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…

> 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.

Not three monitors, but: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#86

Post by wffurr »

Logitech has a few models with a builtin phone stand, too, so you can prop up the phone or tablet as you type. They all have number pads, though, instead of the compact layout.

Update: If you click to the "Tablet Keyboards" section instead of the regular "Keyboards" section, there's the K480 which is a compact model with phone stand: https://www.logitech.com/en-us/mobile/keyboards Why that's not listed in the regular keyboard section remains a mystery...

Do mouse cursors work on iPhones yet or just iPad OS? Because there's other models that have a trackpad on the side, which could be neat. Ah, there's an accessibility setting to enable it, but it's not the same as the iPad OS mouse support.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#87

Post by stonemetal12 »

eloisant wrote: post #12
paraknight wrote: post #5

I've been saying this for ages — the future setup is going to be phones as a singular device. When you get home, you'll dock it to be able to use your peripherals or extra monitors. Phones will become even more powerful, but even then anything heavy can be done in the cloud or at the network edge (with minimal latency thanks to 5g, see cloud gaming). OSs will become more convergent (Windows tried it, Huawei's doing i…

No I don't think so. To be able to dock it you need a screen and keyboard (or a laptop-style "shell"). That means you need a device that takes just as much space as an independent device but can't be used unless you plug your phone to it. The only benefit is a slight lower cost - but then you need to make sure your phone is powerful enough so a cheap Android is out of the picture. You've been saying this for ages, an…

We are already there with laptops and laptop docks. It could certainly be a cellphone dock in the future but the phones just aren't powerful enough now. Maybe an iPhone with an M2 or M3?

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#88

Post by wffurr »

cjlm wrote: post #60

I picked up the delightful Jelly Comb [0] for exactly this reason. [0] https://www.jellycomb.com/products/b046-bluetooth-keyboard?v...

That's the missing model from the Logitech lineup!

They have compact keyboards, keyboards with easy bluetooth switching, and keyboards with a builtin stand, but no one keyboard that has all three.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#89

Post by fsflover »

chronogram wrote: post #83
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…

I don’t know why you’d want that. The place where I have my big monitor is where I also have the space for a computer that has enough room to be always fast and quiet for my tasks that I can leave running things, while my phone is something that I need for communication which can help with information/scheduling and that I would like to have with me at all times. Having all my work on my phone would make me leave tha…

> The place where I have my big monitor is where I also have the space for a computer

If you have a single device for everything, you do not need syncing and backups are needed only for one device.

Re: Smart Phone, Dumb Terminal

#90

Post by andai »

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…

Didn't Ubuntu make a phone ten years ago that did that? But they gave up on it. I also thought Samsung phones could do that, too.
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