In the future, your mobile phone will be your computer. It will allow you to connect to a central database of files where you keep your spreadsheets, documents, unedited blog posts, pictures: anything and everything you’ve ever kept on you current desktop will be on that central database. You dock your phone onto a device that allows you to view everything from a bigger screen, and a standard sized keyboard. Wherever you are, you have all these with you, and it will all fit into your palm.
Sounds like science fiction? Not really. All these things are possible. Proof of concept is that all the aforementioned technologies now exist. The "central database" is the cloud. If you are somehow unfamiliar with how software as a service and the general cloud computing environment works, head on over to Google Documents at http://docs.google.com, using your Gmail account details, log-in. What you would see there is your typical Microsoft Office suite under Google’s vision: accessible anywhere and free. Or perhaps, you are the type of techie who just loves hardware. Can you imagine using your mobile phone to remotely access your office computer. Imagine, accessing your PC at your headquarters in Baltimore while you’ve forgotten your laptop in your hotel while you’re out in Zimbabwe.
Impossible? Not really. Right now there are applications for the iPhone that acts like a desktop remote access pogram, such as the Mini Vmac, while it is now possible to access your computer from the Android-based G1 phone using a VNC server and the LDXE GUI.
Granted that we would need to use faster and more powerful mobile phones or Smartphones than what we have now for us to be able to experience the same speed by which we remotely access a desktop from another desktop. But judging from the advances we’ve seen in mobile phone technology over the recent years, such a powerful Smartphone will be available in no time.
What about docking? Well, that technology has already been deployed on Celio Corporation’s REDFLY Smartphone Dock. Basically, you connect your Smartphone to the REDFLY. Although it looks like a normal laptop or netbook, REDFLY doesn’t have the processors, operating system, CPU, or hard drive. Your Smartphone becomes the CPU.
So you think my scenarios above are still in the realm of science fiction? Think again. Everything is possible; the only question is how and when these innovations all come together.
