Mobile 2.0

This morning I went to my studio and while looking at my desk it occurred to me I own too many tech gadgets I don't need.

I'm fairly confident it happened to most people: how many own a laptop (high chance it's a Mac nowadays), one or two smartphones (professional and private) and a tablet, at least?

What for? 

Laptop are heavier, so we tend to leave them home and bring tablets and for sure we always have our phone with us.

Nevertheless, we own each one because it performs a different task, for different situations.

We have tablets because our smartphones have too little screens and laptops because tablets are really not suitable for office applications.

A mess, plain and simple. 

If you think about it, we have redundant technology all the time, for a simple reason: we need different interfaces, depending on the situation.

So why don't we have a single device with different interfaces? After all, many hardware vendors are already selling laptops with detachable touch screens for combined use.

Still, it means spending thousands of dollars in less redundant hardware. 

Yet always redundant.

That's because our need is a versatile combination of simple applications and interfaces, but the market doesn't have that yet.

Technology is advancing fast, SoC like a Snapdragon 800 can easily perform the same tasks as "classic" i3 CPU.

Imagine a device (I'm actually thinking Android based because of the versatility and diffusion, but it might be anything), the size of a phone, able to connect to a laptop shaped interface, maybe with detachable touch screen. 

Imagine being at home and plug your phone into a docking station connected to your TV and use gestures to browse the web, read your emails, tweet and read the news. 

Imagine picking up a touch screen from the table and bring it with you to read a book in bed.

Imagine going out with phone in your pocket and lightweight screen/keyboard/touchpad combo in your bag.

Imagine having a single computing device and multiple interfaces. There will be no more "sync" but real mobile computing. 

One powerful, portable, practical device with one OS and one set of applications.

Think about the advantages: less painful updates, compatibility issues, interoperability nightmares, unused hardware piling up, lower environmental impact, less power consumption.

A huge market for accessory manufacturers, a better customer base consolidation for OS companies, a perfectly consistent UI for application developers.

That's a real Mobile 2.0. We're not there yet, but I hope we will be soon.