Many of us will need a portable docking station for our smartphone
I can't help thinking of a (near) future when smartphones will be more powerful than most people will ever need, and yet their keyboards and screens will still be constrained by the overall form factor, as all of us will want the devices to be comfortably small.
The size of the keyboard and screen will soon become the main bottleneck of these devices, seriously limiting their uses. This is the main problem that Palm is addressing with the Foleo, I believe. It's already a pain point for many users, and it will become increasingly so as smartphone become more and more powerful. Why so many people don't get it?
The other point that many people don't get is that there is an increasing number of smartphone users that would stop carrying their laptop again if they could, and would use the smartphone for everything they do. Yet many of them can't do this today because the screen and keyboard are too small for regular use. The solution can't be "buy a laptop"! It needs to be, "add a comfortable user interface to your smartphone".
Perhaps the Foleo is not a device for the year 2007, but I am sure it is one for the year 2008 or 2009.
Register
Many of us will need a portable docking station for our smartphone
I can't help thinking of a (near) future when smartphones will be more powerful than most people will ever need, and yet their keyboards and screens will still be constrained by the overall form factor, as all of us will want the devices to be comfortably small.
The size of the keyboard and screen will soon become the main bottleneck of these devices, seriously limiting their uses. This is the main problem that Palm is addressing with the Foleo, I believe. It's already a pain point for many users, and it will become increasingly so as smartphone become more and more powerful. Why so many people don't get it?
The other point that many people don't get is that there is an increasing number of smartphone users that would stop carrying their laptop again if they could, and would use the smartphone for everything they do. Yet many of them can't do this today because the screen and keyboard are too small for regular use. The solution can't be "buy a laptop"! It needs to be, "add a comfortable user interface to your smartphone".
Perhaps the Foleo is not a device for the year 2007, but I am sure it is one for the year 2008 or 2009.
I am also sure Palm can wait.