I’m Juho, a 25 year old student of Digital cultures in University of Turku and currently doing my Erasmus exchange year at Bath Spa Uni in the UK. My studies are focused in the study of internet and social media as cultural platforms, as well as everyday life’s digitalization. I’m very interested in the fact that computers started as pure computers back in the day, and as time went on they specialised in to various gadgets and machines which had their own purposes and ways of use. However I see that we are technologically going back to having more universal machines that adapt to our ways of life. The differences between phones, tablets, phablets and laptops have already started to blur very much in just a couple of years. I’m excited to see what the future holds!
We’re all tech enthusiasts here! I hope your welcoming message from @iKirin has presented everything most relevant that’s going on here at the moment.
Right now our team @ eve is really busy and focused on preparing the launch of the first product this community has developed with us but we’ll try gettin’ here as often as possible!
Actually saying that we’re “technologically going back” is not right at all. Computers started as machines with very strict and limited purpose: doing one specific type of calculations. And now they’re becoming more versatile. There were NEVER any computers as versatile as 2in1 tablets.
Sorry, I need to clarify myself :)! What I meant was that during 2000’s we’ve seen many of the aspects of a computer getting assimilated to smaller products with a very spesific purpose of use, phones and tablets especially. And now the special features of these smaller devices are being combined into the basic computers, for example let’s say better mobility and touch screens or just by making phone calls with it. Even the construct of television has been revolutionised by streaming services and online TV. In a way computers have given alot to the evolving tech around them and now the useful bits from specialised tech such as smartphones are leaking back into the basic computer. Tech imoroves not only itself, but other tech around also. This way I see we might be heading towards a more universal device/computer, a 3in1 or 4in1 computer. I hope this helped to open my line of thought
Thanks for the explanation, I think it makes sense you’re right that different types of computers are being unified and I’m waiting impatiently for what the future holds. I had posted my vision of “phabtop” somewhere in the what’s next category. Imagine Surface Book, but with a detachable handheld smartphone that can be used very comfortably in one hand (maybe between 4" and 4.5"), and if you need a bigger screen, you plug in the tablet part. If you need more power, you plug in the keyboard part. The biggest limitation right now seems to be the CPU. The current models are either too weak, or produce too much heat and require too much power for current batteries. Some people are saying that batteries are the most limiting factor, but I’d say that a bigger battery can be added by making the phone thicker, but nothing can solve the overheating issue.
Oh, I remember that Asus thing. But it wasn’t really a true computer, because it was a relatively low-end phone (even for that time) powering the whole thing, and the tablet/laptop (I think the keyboard wasn’t even detachable) didn’t provide any extra computing power.
What I meant was that the keyboard would give graphical computing power just like Surface Book does. And both the tablet and keyboard parts would have extra batteries inside.
And the phone of course needs to have an Intel Core processor with full Windows running on it. It should be relatively easy to write a Metro app to use as dialer, since I know there are desktop apps that can write SMS. Maybe even port the Windows Phone’s default dialer app, with Microsoft’s help.
Right now I can’t find where I posted the original idea, but I also included it in this thread:
I think they also had a similar device but it was a laptop. That was before tablets became popular. But yeah, something like that. Except that I’d never even consider buying a tablet if it can’t do actual computer stuff (a.k.a Windows)
(a.k.a Windows)