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 of the screen.
Oh and of course your earbuds have been connected the whole time broadcasting any audio that might be playing in the desktop without interruption.
>cloud desktop
Please kill me. :)
[1] https://news.microsoft.com/2021/07/14/microsoft-unveils-wind...
Just needs to be an instant thing now.
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.
Also I have the Wacom One LCD drawing tablet that I often connect to my Galaxy Tab S6 and draw on in in DeX mode with ClipStudio. It effectively turns this setup to a nice portable drawing studio, with the added flexibility of being able to work on your projects also on the go with just the Tab S6.
Not three monitors, but: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5
A high definition display (perhaps a projector or OLED screen) embeds a streaming device of which there are already plenty on the market. A computer with integrated game controller and advanced graphics sits charging on a dock, ready to pair and cast it's intensively, locally rendered graphics to a screen of the user's choosing. A room off to the side contains 5 or more smartscreens, ready to accept display from a personalized repository of cloud containers.
A touch-tablet hangs from a swivel arm under the cabinets above the kitchen stove, a swipe away from picking up a webpage from a smartphone or another on-network device. A UV light is embedded under the cabinet to help sanitize the tablet after cooking.
I think the intelligence gets decentralized behind APIs -- some hosted locally, some hosted through the internet. The user interfaces become more focused on context. You have various levels and kinds of input and edge intelligence based on the specific goal, all backed up by some handful of cloud applications. But a fleet like this becomes too hard to manage for an individual. So the specific deployments, allocations and budgeting is managed by an AI system that you set "moods" for through a smartphone app with some -- but limited -- advanced, specific settings available through a hamburger menu.
Rumors say Apple is working on a monitor with an A13 chip embedded in it for something like this kind of usage.
Just give me the 5K iMac panel in a basic shell, that’s all I need.
There's no 2x?
I am not sure that there is a phone that can do that though. I can plug my Android into my USB-C dock and it can display a copy of the screen on the screen, but that is about it. Doesn't even seem to work with the USB keyboard I have plugged in.
This rumour about Apple sticking one of their SoCs in a monitor [0] popped up the other day. Relevant here.
And their current Lightning->HDMI adapter uses an embedded chip that decodes a h264 stream of the "screen", potentially the exact same stream that would be sent via AirPlay to an AppleTV. CarPlay does something similar.
[0] https://9to5mac.com/2021/07/23/exclusive-apple-testing-new-e...
If you have a single device for everything, you do not need syncing and backups are needed only for one device.
One of the great things about having various synced devices is that if one fails or is misplaced, stolen etc., the others are instantly available.
No single device solution can replicate this real world benefit.
And even having a spare doesn’t help if you don’t sync.
PC 40W
Monitor 27W
NAS box 2.5W
2x Hard drives 16W
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 know the answer to this question. I feel like the answer is yes.
The other idea is just to mount the phone to a head mount display and go VR or AR. But I feel like that is going to require way more advancement in resolution on the phone screens to get right.
We can get there. We are super close. The iPad with an M1 chip probably already has the power to do it. Maybe one or two more years and this is not only feasible but purchasable. I'm a buyer.