Starting about 3 years ago, I started saying that we were very close (5 years or less) to having cell phones so powerful that they will be able to replace laptops and desktops.
The scenario would be that you’d sit down at your desk and plop your phone on a cradle. That cradle would be attached to a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and other peripherals…much like laptop docks today.
It’ll still be a few years before this becomes widespread–and a few years after that before Apple revolutionizes the industry by finally adopting it–but this is a great first step.
It’s going to be 18 months before I can get a new phone, but I’ll be willing to bet that by then most phones will have this capability.
The higher end newer Droid phones have this too (I’ve got one, with the HD dock, and the laptop dock).
I’ve been thinking this would be the way things would be going for a while now too.
Does that HD dock let you plug in a mouse and keyboard?
I was really intrigued by the webtop. It was maddening that it cost as much as a netbook. I was going to buy an Atrix it the webtop was a more reasonable price.
Add in that the latest release of Android has enabled multi-user support, and it looks like we’re definitely getting close.
I think to really replace the desktop, a phone OS will need an actual Desktop Environment with a window manager that it can switch to. Some tasks just require being able to run multiple programs in separate windows simultaneously. It will also need a native office suite that is both good quality and MS Office compatible (or the ability to run MS Office, but that’s not very likely for non-Windows-based phones, I think).
Motorola’s Webtop looks like it was a good start, but it apparently had issues beyond the price. Hopefully, it won’t die and will be brought to a new phone line with a processor that can handle it.