Your smartphone is ready to morph into your next computer — with a little help from Microsoft.
Microsoft has applied for a "smart interface system" patent for smartphones. The patent shows a dock that would include an output for an external display, an ethernet jack and a USB hub, among other things.
But why would you want an ethernet connection and an external display for your smartphone when you’ve already got a computer on your desk? Clearly, Microsoft is looking forward to a future when smartphones have enough power to rival the capabilities of desktops for at least some tasks.
"The idea is not unreasonable," says Charles Golvin, principal
analyst with Forrester Research. "Smartphones have enough power and you
could use it as a primary computing device but the question is will
consumers go down that road."
With more powerful processors, smartphones currently have almost the
same processing capability as computers from a few years ago. Consumers
now use their phones for everything from web surfing to chat, simple
productivity applications, e-mail and photos. But the inability to connect the phone to peripheral devices such as a
keyboard or a display has prevented the smartphone from truly becoming
a computing system. A dock could help alleviate that, says the patent.
Smartphone docks today offer little more than the ability to charge the
phone itself or offer audio and video output.
The move would help smartphone users, especially in emerging markets, ride the computing wave, says the patent.
"The cost of cellphones is significantly less than computing systems at many levels," says the patent. "However, the cellphone is rapidly evolving into a smart communications device that can provide sufficient computing power and functionality."
According to Microsoft’s patent, the dock system would have a a network interface and a USB hub to attach peripherals, a communications component, a processor and memory, an OS and a few applications and a configuration component to sense the mobile device and establish interoperability.
The dock could significantly help extend the functionality of the smartphone, believes Microsoft.
Users can store profiles such as home or office that would allow its usage in different environments, says the patent. "By detecting one or more of the externals systems the smart system can automatically select the user profile to employ," it says. For instance, if a keyboard, mouse and TV are detected as connected, it is likely the user is at home.
All this points to the fact that for Microsoft this would ultimately be a software play, says Golvin. "The intelligence seems to be in the software," he says. "So Microsoft can offer that intelligence or software and let other hardware makers build out the device itself."
Microsoft has not indicated any production plans that would take the idea beyond just a drawing on a patent application.
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