Although a phone has tons of power, and can probably function as a low-end desktop, the lack of a sizeable cooling solution, or even just a plain heatsink, would cause it to throttle pretty quickly.
I have to believe this is the reason, or otherwise someone would have done it already (successfully that is) for such an obvious use case.
If that was an issue you would see it already all around.
> Although a phone has tons of power, and can probably function as a low-end desktop, the lack of a sizeable cooling solution, or even just a plain heatsink, would cause it to throttle pretty quickly.
I would rather compare it to laptops and processing power of snapdragon 8 is rather in mid-upper segment of average available on the market laptop
ARM is also a different platform with way better computing performance per Watt ratio from regular PC, there is throttling, but when it kicks in it doesn't reduce your performance so significantly
> I have to believe this is the reason, or otherwise someone would have done it already (successfully that is) for such an obvious use case.
Believe, or not - the reasons why it wasn't done so far are far beyond technical reasons and we could have computer like capable phones long time ago already.
Compared to iOS, everything is slightly clunkier.
The performance per watt in ARM exceeded x86 since long ago, but most manufacturers used that feat to create mobile CPUs instead of cranking up the power to see if it catches up to high performance x86
On the other hand Apple can make expensive SoC without worrying about sales
Apple can decide that it is switching from Intel to ARM and not looking back so it not only realizes costs from investing in ARM but it ultimately will realize savings from not having to support Intel.
There is no real unity behind Microsoft, Dell, Lenovo and all the other vendors, plus the motto of Windows users is "who moved my cheese?" You don't use Windows because Windows is the best operating system, you use Windows because it has the most software, and that software is written for and optimized for the x86 platform. Microsoft is always floating ARM-based systems as a hobby but it cannot make the commitment that it is going "all in" so it has to support Intel as the primary processor for the foreseeable future, so the ARM transition costs Microsoft but never saves them anything.
On top of that Microsoft is dependent on vendors like NVIDIA and AMD to supply drivers for graphics cards and all the other parts for their machines and getting them all to supply good drivers for ARM is yet another big ask. Apple can say "here is the supported hardware" and not have to fight with vendors who have the power to torpedo their ambitions.
I find it somewhat ironic that in wanting for a few CEO's to "Embrace… Extinguish" Linux in favor of Windows, Microsoft eventually created a world where Windows is a sink on their resources they yet can't axe because though not anymore a money-maker in its own right, Windows remains the basis for pretty much all their money-makers. In becoming a "software-first" company, they pretty much followed if not provoked the very paradigm that makes Windows a non-monetizable entity next to as-good-as-embedded MacOS and ever-free Linux.
Linux which, incidentally, is also THE basis for money-makers worldwide and the OSS model means nobody using it today had to fork even 1% of the real cumulative cost of that kernel + ecosystem since the 1990's. How's that for a win, Linux 1:0 Microsoft — that the winner did not even seek, busy doing its own thing, while the other pretty much dug its own commercial grave out of 'relevance debt' (not sure how to word what Windows has become)…
TL;DR: it's like this big item taking all your inventory yet that you can't ditch ever because it's required to do all your quests. In games, you wish devs forgot about that crap and just made the inventory that much smaller. In real life, Microsoft can't kill Windows without closing business overnight. sad_pikachu_face.jpg
[Note that IMHO, MS is incredibly strong nowadays, so they'll find a way, and this is a fantastic learning experience for the industry.]
On Laptop/Server side Qualcomm need to catch up to AMD/Apple.