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Comment by pnloyd | Hacker News Reader

>> The larger the screen, the more you do with it.

I think this is getting at an interesting point. Over the past decade smartphones undertook a rapid and seem less evolution from a fancy gadget into what's now basically a full fledged minature computing device. It still looks relatively the same, but now has a fundamentaly different role in our daily lives, for better or for worse.

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Yes, but let’s not kid ourselves, people are using their big screen phones primarily for messaging, social media, and watching videos. It’s not all that different from what we were using them for 5 years ago.

I'm a mobile app developer, i develop apps on a computer, not on the smartphone itself, nor does any developer i know. I tried an Android setup a couple years back, the overall experience was negative.

A phone cannot replace a computer until that happens. (at least for people like me)

For me personally the limiting factor is the keyboard. If it's a PITA to write something, I'm not encouraged to write productive things on a smartphone.

I've got a foldable Bluetooth keyboard and my phone supports Miracast, and for brief moments at a time I can pretend I have a weirdly small laptop.

It's a "present"/"past-future" that Microsoft envisioned years back that we have all the technical solutions, just not all the practical solutions. Android is too fragmented to sell such a vision wholesale across the platform, and Apple too disinterested, too invested/stuck in keeping devices to specific niches (because it sells more devices).

I just got a Blackberry KeyOne, with a physical keyboard. It is no longer a PITA to write short text messages or emails of a few sentences. I still wouldn't write anything substantial with it.

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