[adrianmsmith]

> Then I can just bring a laptop.

I guess what I was looking forward to was just that phones are smaller. Rather than taking a laptop, you have your phone with you all the time. Imagine getting to the office (where, as you say, there's a screen, keyboard, mouse etc.) and plugging the USB-C cable from the monitor (to which the keyboard/mouse/etc is connected) into your phone, and the iPhone changes to macOS and you can use it like a Mac.

That would indeed be no different to carrying your laptop around, but it would be a lot smaller and more convenient than a laptop.

[planb]

But in the office, there could be a beefy workstation waiting for me. As long as we're not talking about floating workplace setups (which I'm no big fan of) or cutting costs, I still don't see the upside.

[adrianmsmith]

That's true, but I think different people have different needs and preferences.

Many companies give developers laptops (even though workstations would be faster) so evidently some people already trade portability for power, so having your phone be your main computer would just be a further step in that direction.

For people who aren't developers, e.g. managers doing email, browsing, Excel etc., I'm sure a phone would be powerful enough.