[wladimir]

+1

The truth of the statement in the OP depends on the vague definition of a 'personal computer' used. There is only an artificial difference: what kind of input/output is used. But what if you connect a monitor and a bluetooth keyboard to your (rooted?) Android phone? Instant Linux box.

There is a very large grey area in between which is generally left out. What about laptops? netbooks? laptops with touch screens? Pads with detachable keyboards? Are those "personal computers"?

"General purpose personal computation devices" will live.

[5hoom]

The definition of a personal computer is probably a topic that could be endlessly debated. I would personally classify it as a general purpose computer that the user can program, so why not a phone running (non crippled) Linux?

Once you can run your own native code on the thing the differences are down to factors like software ecosystem, hardware performance and input mechanism, but the potential is there.

[bergie]

I actually did some on-device hacking on the Nokia N900. Terminal, Git, Python and a reasonably nice code editor: http://maemo.org/downloads/product/Maemo5/pygtkeditor/

Python was especially well suited for on-device development as you're not so dependent on special characters not available on typical phone QWERTYs.

[wladimir]

Exactly. Hardware (CPU/GPU) performance of current phones is on par with "desktop PCs" of only a few years back, so I would even count that one out. It's fast enough, and they're catching up.