When will Smartphones take over PC's?

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Finch

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#180893 25-Sep-2015 09:34

Hi guys.

Something I have been thinking about lately, and something that I think I have raised here 2-3 years ago.

How far away are we from using our Smartphones 100% of the time, instead of PC's/Laptops/Ultrabooks etc?

I guess another way to word that question would be, do you still use your laptop/PC etc, or is everything you do 100% on your Smartphone?

For things like movies, you can use Chromecast where available.

We can do our banking, shopping etc from our Smartphones.

I think the biggest draw back is the keyboard. Typing things up on your Smartphone just takes so much longer.

What so you think? Will we ever be "100% Smartphone?"

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#1394185 25-Sep-2015 09:42

For the 90% Facebook only users maybe but for the vast majority of users. Very long time if ever

DizzyD

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#1394187 25-Sep-2015 09:44

In my personal life yes a smartphone could substitute a desktop/laptop computer.

But for work/business. There is no ways I could get by on a smartphone only. In fact, I recon most businesses would not be able to function if employees were using smartphones only.

timbosan

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#1394197 25-Sep-2015 09:51

I say never - its not the device or the form factor, its the ability to create rather than consume content. Creating 'stuff' on phones or even tablets (excluding ones such as Surface) is help back by the onscreen keyboard, but most importantly apps are not as powerful as desktop apps.

Take a look at Microsoft Office. Say Excel - in the IOS version you cannot do VBA, you cannot connect to external data sources, authentication does not work smoothly, using key combinations such as CTRL+SHIFT+4 (which changes numbers to currency format) are just not available, and trying to edit complex sheets by tapping and entering numbers in the space at the top of the sheet, rather than directly in the cell, is a productivity killer.

Also, you just don't (generally) have the accuracy as mouse gives you on a desktop - touch is just not as accurate on devices designed to be prodded by fat fingers.

Also just saving content on a mobile device is not the same as a desktop - unless you save it to the Cloud, you cannot save it locally (OK, iOS only here, Android doesn't have this problem).

And forget about anything complicated like video editing/compositing/software development/etc - the software and devices are just not powerful enough.

The only way I can see this happening is going back to the idea of dumb terminals, and using Citrix or RDP to connect to instances of Windows/OSX/etc.

Technofreak

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#1394214 25-Sep-2015 10:02

For me at least, the laptop will never be replaced by my smartphone.

I do too much work requiring a decent size screen and a full keyboard. My Nokia E7 is the closest phone I know of to a laptop and while it's very good in this respect so far as a phone goes as it has dedicated physical keyboard it still nowhere comes close to meeting my laptop requirements.

On the other hand having the ability to plug a full size screen and keyboard into the phone might fill the bill so long as the phone has a decent processor and memory. Come to think of if I can do that with the E7 but haven't bothered all that often.

It's an old phone now and doesn't have the grunt of newer phones but there nothing currently that matches it's keyboard. The keyboard as well as giving a physical keyboard which is nice to use it also leaves much more screen real estate to view your information

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reven

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#1394225 25-Sep-2015 10:17

out and about i use smartphone, on the couch to quickly look up something smartphone. but most stuff I still use laptop/desktop.

i rarely buy things using my smartphone, ill look up prices in store to compare things. but if im wanting to do some online shopping its on a desktop or laptop

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#1394227 25-Sep-2015 10:18

i still like forcing firmwares into my phones, so yeah ... need pc still

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andrew027

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#1394242 25-Sep-2015 10:21

For me, never. I use my smartphone for a lot of personal stuff but it's not really suitable for business. The MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint experience is average at best, there's no Visio app, and I don't want to be maintaining HTML pages in our corporate content management system on a phone.

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Finch

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#1394248 25-Sep-2015 10:24

reven: out and about i use smartphone, on the couch to quickly look up something smartphone. but most stuff I still use laptop/desktop.

i rarely buy things using my smartphone, ill look up prices in store to compare things. but if im wanting to do some online shopping its on a desktop or laptop

Can I ask why you do your online shopping via your Laptop and not Smartphone? Personally I'm the same, I just feel safer using my laptop, rather than my Smartphone.

reven

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#1394254 25-Sep-2015 10:28

Finch:
reven: out and about i use smartphone, on the couch to quickly look up something smartphone. but most stuff I still use laptop/desktop.

i rarely buy things using my smartphone, ill look up prices in store to compare things. but if im wanting to do some online shopping its on a desktop or laptop

Can I ask why you do your online shopping via your Laptop and not Smartphone? Personally I'm the same, I just feel safer using my laptop, rather than my Smartphone.

easier to browse, I can open many tabs very easily and its easier to compare prices. I might buy something quickly using the trademe app, but if im doing serious purchasing i do it via a desktop/laptop

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#1394256 25-Sep-2015 10:29

I can't imagine ever doing software development on a phone!

reven

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#1394263 25-Sep-2015 10:37

Behodar: I can't imagine ever doing software development on a phone!

well windows 10 phones and a universal VS app, connecting my phone to a external display KB/M I can easily imagine doing it :P

sidefx

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#1394266 25-Sep-2015 10:41

It depends if you mean doing everything purely on the smartphone screen, which as others have said above I don't think will every happen, or using the smartphone, but with peripherals some of the time when productivity is needed. This may even include things like docking stations with additional processing power to supplement the smartphone (GPU, etc) - I suspect the lines will blur but sooner or later your smartphone or something similar will be the "brains" of all your devices.

Perhaps once Microsoft releases win phone 10 and continuum proper is running on phones, and then the other big players do something similar, or perhaps it'll take a few iterations of the idea. The demo by Joe Belfiore at the teched keynote was certainly impressive IMO....

3-4 years ago, if you'd asked me the same question about tablets my answer would have been never, but then I got a surface pro and with an hdmi adaptor and wireless mouse\keyboard, I've used it as a full desktop replacement for around 12 months for everything other than gaming and it works brilliantly.

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Lias

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#1394273 25-Sep-2015 10:45

As an IT pro, and an avid gamer, almost certainly never. The majority of my professional and personal use scenarios simply only fit with a desktop, or a laptop with a bunch of extras plugged in.

Even basic tasks like surfing the internet or email are a decisively inferior experience on a phone or tablet to a full blown PC.

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Behodar

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#1394279 25-Sep-2015 10:49

reven:
Behodar: I can't imagine ever doing software development on a phone!

well windows 10 phones and a universal VS app, connecting my phone to a external display KB/M I can easily imagine doing it :P

Granted I've only seen a Windows 10 phone in continuity(?) mode once, but switching between apps was very slow - essentially it's single-tasking and each app is paged out when you switch to another one. That's not really ideal for development, although as you say it's probably possible. Are you really doing it "on the phone" at that point though?

Wade

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#1394280 25-Sep-2015 10:51

Are we talking working off a phone or using a phone in a docked situation?

If MS's Continuum works as intended i could just about see myself able to live off a phone, but part of that would be being able to dock it to a conventional desktop setup. The decider would be how much power can you pack into a phone form factor. We are at a point in time where laptop levels of processing power are crossing over into phones so yes i reckon our phones will become our pc's

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