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Comment by DigitalJack | Hacker News Reader

Motorola did this 5 years ago. Nobody cared. http://www.digitaltrends.com/buying-guides/a-complete-guide-...

I think the main problem is who wants to carry around a laptop that you have to plug your phone in to use? That's a pretty big "Accessory." I mean, if you already are carrying something around as big as a laptop, why cripple it with phone hardware?

I think a more compelling use-case would be a phone dock video and usb connections. But I don't know if even that is compelling enough to be successful.\

I've thought that a phone would make a great trackpad for a laptop. Maybe instead of the phone being the laptop, it just integrates nicely (app sync, etc...) and you socket in as a trackpad and secondary "info" display.

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Motorola built an accessory for a single phone. This is different: it's a combo of keyboard+display+mouse for any phone that can handle the I/O.

I could see this working if the devices were reasonably common in e.g. airports, hotels, etc. But they would have to be reasonably ubiquitous for you to confidently forego dragging along a laptop.

The issue 5 years ago for me was that phones were not very good 5 years ago. Now processors in phones are excellent and they are pushing out 1080 or even 1440 res on the phone and have 4+ GB RAM.

For having a full screen version of Office or browsing it looks great. Plus it is only $99 and all my data is on my phone so if it gets broken or lost it isn't a big deal (although if my phone gets broken or lost it is a big deal, depends if the trade off is worth it to you).

I love the idea and I think for some people it would be all the "computer" they ever need.

My buddy had an atrix and he got the laptop dock; it was actually OK, but since it was limited to that one phone it didn't work out long term (he switched phones about a year in).

There are probably folks who don't do much more than word processing and email, in which case this (a screen + keyboard + battery for your phone) might actually be useful. I feel like this is the niche that tablets w/ keyboards fill -- this will have to compete directly with those. It has the benefit of the trackpad, which feels more like a full laptop.

I still have a Lapdock. I use mine as a handy workbench monitory/keyboard/battery setup for the plethora of small device I have that fit in its squid-like cable adapters: raspberry Pi's, beagleboards, and so on. If but for that stupid decision to make non-standard i/o ports, the Lapdock probably could have been a more useful general-purpose dock, already.

That's really something to keep in mind. Superbook is one thing, but its really just a fixed Lapdock with a different ethos regarding interoperability.

This is a wonderful idea. I know at least three people in my family who do all of their computing on their smartphone. My fiancee is one of them. She only uses a computer when she needs to edit some documents. I think this would be an ideal accessory for her, but she uses an iPhone.

There are a variety of apps that let you use your phone as a touchpad with a variety (or lack) of information on your phone. Somewhat nice for certain scenarios.

Disclaimer: I haven't used that sort of setup since the 1st gen iphone and windows xp.

Palm built a mobile device 7 years before the iphone...

And Apple build mobile device 14 years before the iPhone. So?

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