Accessorize Your Phone With Another Phone

Rambo Tribble writes "Ars Technica reports that HTC is introducing the Mini, a small, more convenient and feature-reduced phone to tie into your big, cumbersome smartphone. So, dumb is the new smart?" Don't forget a wristwatch phone to connect to the smaller phone.

It's backwards

[Dr. Evil]

I don't understand this. Why would you take your inconvenient, expensive to upgrade, battery-sucking tablet and put your SIM card inside it? Then bring a smaller device in case it's too inconvenient to take out your smartphone?

Why not have a small phone with great battery life and core features, then just use it as a hotspot for a tablet? I was looking at wristwatch phones and none of them seem to do this. There's even the new Pebble http://getpebble.com/ [getpebble.com]... which is a wristwatch UI for your fat phone.

This whole trend is backwards. Put the phone on our wrists and let us carry an optional tablet, handset or earpiece.

A nugget with a menu of optional interfaces

[ldbapp]

What I want is a computing nugget that I can carry in my pocket (on a necklace, whatever), and then carry any number of different task-specific interfaces to it. You don't even have to carry them. Just walk up to your desk, and your keyboard and monitor connect and you have a desktop. Pick up your "smart-phone" interface, and go. Pick up your candybar interface and go. But all the computing and storage stays the same. It's your cloud in your pocket. Sell me that HTC.

Re:Start of something big.

[Jane Q. Public]

"So do you carry the tablet absolutely everywhere you go?"

Do you carry a briefcase absolutely everywhere you go? Or maybe a purse? To be honest, usually I carry a small backpack. Tablet in backpack + bluetooth headset sounds good to me.

Re:Laugh

[maxwell demon]

The Brits probably do it best, "Mobile" is as amorphous as you can get.

Well, in Germany we usually call it "Handy". That's even more amorphous, isn't it? :-)