[maratd]

> Seriously why hasn't someone made a smart phone that "transforms" into a larger screen form factor when connected to a monitor?

It has been done repeatedly. Motorola and Ubuntu come to mind. Both were failures.

I don't want my phone to turn into a desktop. Desktops are all about muscle, massive storage, gigabit connections, etc. Phones are about saving battery life.

[benologist]

Desktops don't mean any of those things, crappy old computers with none of your characteristics are very common.

Technology has improved significantly in the 3 - 4 years since Motorola made theirs, and Ubuntu's failed as a crowdsourcing campaign. Nothing has been proven.

[api]

I interpreted Ubuntu's failure more a statement of lack of confidence in the ability of Ubuntu to execute on this idea than as a statement against the idea's ultimate potential.

Samsung, Google, Apple, or Nokisoft (MS+Nokia) could do it.

[mmebane]

I think Microsoft could be in a position to do this with Windows 10. It certainly seems to me like it would be the next logical step after the Surface Pro.

[monocasa]

And phones in nearly all cases are limited by thermal profile. That's what keeps you from running at full tilt on a mobile device even when plugged in.

[ufmace]

I like the basic idea of it, but I think their implementations were too soon. We aren't too far off now from where the only way high-end phone CPUs are behind low-end laptop CPUs is power consumption and heat dissipation.

Maybe in another 5 years, it'll only be a mobile CPU because the power consumption is ramped so far down. Then you could plug in a big cable and get enough power to run full speed, plus your gigabit connection, massive drives, multiple monitors, mouse, keyboard, etc. Heat might be a tougher one to solve though.

Or maybe we'll stick to syncing the data over the cloud instead and keeping the two platforms separate.