How long before your phone is a 'true' computer in your pocket?

[thedogisdead]

I was pondering this the other day after installing the fantastic Opera Mobile on my Symbian phone.

With my phone I can:


Browse the internet very efficiently with tabs and speed dial
Download torrents with SymTorrent
Use MSN/ Facebook chat with Palringo
Check and send emails with Google's own Gmail client
Get a satnav experience with the Google Maps app
Take fantastic photo and video
Play NES and SNES games through emulation
Play videos
Stream live BBC television or stream programmes from iPlayer
Play more MP3s than your average iPod nano
Play plenty of games designed for the phone or Java


...you get the picture! It's a few different devices and a mini-pc rolled into one.

Symbian on the Nokia 5800 is nice - You've got home screen shortcuts not 1,000,000 miles from AWN and an app menu like the iPhone. With a nice wallpaper, it already feels a bit like a desktop OS

So how long will it be before phones are 'open' mini-computers on which we can install whatever mobile operating system we like?

If my phone can already do this, why not VLC, Pidgin, Deluge, Rhythmnbox... Ubuntu mobile?!

The phone function is just another app now... you could enter a few essential settings to get you on the network you subscribe to and away you go.

Does this sound like crazy talk, or are we heading this way anyway?

[murderslastcrow]

N900 is closer to this, but I recently threw out my cellphone and realized that, since the AIGO can run your phone service and text through the SIM card 3g slot, I might as well just wait to get that as a phone instead of using a traditional plan.

So, if you have an AIGO, your phone literally is a computer. That's what I'm banking on, ironically, as you feel it's so far into the future.

[handy]

According to Intel, Sony & other BIG guns, next year we can expect to start seeing a whole new range of electronic devices, including things that we most of us would have not imagined. The convergence of technology continues, & the internet is going to be playing an ever larger part, apparently.

Video to & from the internet in a wide range of forms, from personal to public & visa versa. The multi-media corps will start providing a range of new services & by 2013 it is expected by the aforementioned BIG guns, that 95% of all internet traffic will be video! (I'll post the link if I find it)

Personally I'm wary of it. I see the freedom of the internet becoming more limited & the internet costing more, as the BIG guns take it over.

I surely do hope I'm wrong.

[Edit:] I should have mentioned, that hand held devices will play a major part in the techno-GIANTS plans for the little people that feed them, & keep them alive.

[murderslastcrow]

Ditto. I gather a lot more from reading on the internet than watching, anyway.

[julianb]

Phones already have plenty of RAM and processor power for "real" applications. You know, openoffice.org type stuff.

But an iPhone is still too small to have a regular keyboard, and you can't fit a 9 inch screen on it either.

A pretty nice keyboard used to exist for "palm pilot" type devices which folded out to a full size keyboard, but when folded-up it was, well, a little bigger than two iPhones on top of each other. Folks could improve on that technology or improve on voice recognition which is already pretty darn good.

Some day they might make a folding monitor too, so that a device smaller than a netbook could have a 12 inch screen. Maybe.

[BuffaloX]

Depends on what you consider a "real computer".

I consider your current phone a real computer.

[Marvin666]

I don't consider it a computer until you can install a normal version of an os, and the firmware becomes a bios.

[sgosnell]

That pretty much describes the N900. You can install any OS that will run on the ARM platform if you want, but Maemo is a Debian derivative optimized for it. I'm going to have to give it some consideration, but the cost of a data plan, and the fact that the place where I spend more than half my time has no 3G coverage is holding me back. I'm just not quite ready for a computer phone.

[lisati]

Who knows?

Many of today's appliances probably have more computing power than some of the early computers that filled several rooms.

/me thinks back to the days when mobile phones were the size of bricks and could only make phone calls, and even earlier to when having a hand-held calculator was a big deal. Some of us here remember the days of being able to get only one TV station, and that was in black-and-white! (I'd better shut my trap now!)

[phrostbyte]

If you have some kind of mini-DVI port on a smartphone, I figure you can use it like a full blown computer. Really the limitation right now is screen size and no key/mouse. IMO.

[handy]

They will eventually come up with the human implantable chip that upgrades the hell out of (or more likely, even more hell into) the RFID chip which some people have already had their babies implanted with in the U.S.!!!???).

It will upgrade our brain to give us telepathic type phone systems, where we know when someone wants to communicate with us from a distance & so choose to share a part of our mind with them now; get back to them later; or avoid altogether;- as there's nothing worse than telespamic mind invasion; it's the absolute height of rudeness.[-X