Quite a few gcc/vim/shell-centric developers use iPads as terminals and they work very well for this (with or without a keyboard).
That said, I'm typing this response on a Macbook Pro.
You can obviously gain root, and you can easily tick the box to allow unknown sources, but it seems likely that 99% of Android consumers are not going to do this without a decent reason.
You can get all that apart from the screen pretty much any Android tablet or phone these days, and the screen too on a large number of devices with either HDMI or MHL.
> I also don't like how all the pads and mobile devices are locked-down and more focused on tracking user activity than being a computing device.
Not nearly all are. My tablet came pre-rooted, and is known to be fairly easy to get plain Linux booting on.
Hmm, how about a CPU powerful enough to not fall over when repeatedly compiling that enormous codebase and running your massively parallel number-crunching app?
Tablets seem to be a pretty anemic when it comes to crunching (for good reason ... battery life, size, and cooling issues affect tablets/phones far more than they do a desktop)...
Tablets are fun way to browse the web while sitting on the couch, but the small size that optimizes them for that usage comes with costs; surely there are many applications where it simply doesn't work out?
I would guess that many Android tablets would have this capability.
(I checked the iPad SSH clients this spring, they seemed to be able to handle vim but not Emacs. Time to check again, I guess. WTF -- terminal emulators that don't let much of key codes for control etc through!?)
(Especially since the private APIs are already there, they just need to allow them)
I guess it serves me right for using/loving a closed platform... :-( :-)