Mobile Mini-Computers?

If you’ve seen commercials, seen one in person, or have a Motorola Atrix 4G smartphone, you understand the title of this post a little better now. The Atrix is an Android powered dual-core phone; but it has a dock and WebTop. This allows you to dock your phone and use a full size screen and keyboard like it was also a computer.

I’ve thought for a while now that smartphones were heading this direction, but I think the natural evolution will bring greater capabilities. Android specifically has an obvious progression option. Google is also developing notebook computers using ChromeOS. This is simply a Linux based operating system only running Google’s Chrome web browser. This OS focuses on web based in the cloud applications and access. Many people wonder why Google is offering ChromeOS when Android should cover that territory nicely.

I speculate that in the near future, mobile smartphones will have enough power to run this basic ChromeOS on a larger screen with a dock. This would standardize a dock based solution for Android so there are not multiple proprietary “dock operating systems” for every manufacturer/carrier.

If they could then come up with a basic standard plug for a dock, you could easily only need one device for all your computing needs. No need to carry a laptop with your phone. Your phone(or tablet) will do it all. We will probably have to wait a while to see if this comes to fruition, but if it does, it could greatly reduce costs and waste. I guess we’ll see!