Wednesday 10 December 2014

Is the 'one device to power them all' dream over?



   In 2011 Motorola released the Atrix - the first phone with a finger print scanner, but more importantly, the first phone which could be connected to both laptop and a hdmi docks which launched a desktop interface, powered entirely by the phone. It was revolutionary.

   Somehow Motorola had trouble shifting their Atrix's - the consensus for struggling sales being that the phone was 'too geeky' for the average consumer! As the company changed their priorities as the platform didn't gain momentum, they killed off their webtop platform and left us heartbroken.

   The problem for Motorola was that they were slightly ahead of their time. The Tegra 2 processor in the Atrix was not quite powerful enough to provide a good experience, but if they had been a year later, the Tegra 3 and Snapdragon S4 platforms would have provided us with a much better experience.

   Since then we've heard snippets about this idea being rekindled. Blackberry said that they would try to get BB10 everywhere and they even hinted that it could become a desktop platform and there was the fateful IndieGoGo campaign from the guys over at Ubuntu, but the price was a stumbling block and they just couldn't really garner the sort of interest they needed to get the phone off the ground.

   So while Linux has struggled to fund a one device model, Microsoft have opted instead to promise the synergy in another way. Their recent 'One Experience for everything in your life' campaign has highlighted the companies direction, even if they struggle to giveaway Windows Phones at the moment. The premise for the computing giant then is to offer you the same experience across your phone, tablet and computing platforms, with no immediate intention of merging devices into one. This is something which it seems as though they'll push even more by the time Windows 10 rolls around!


And why would they, as it stands they can get away with collecting your cash for three operating systems if you buy a phone, tablet and PC and until they could make a tablet dock, desktop dock and the mobile phone themselves, it's not a financially viable to offer one device which can do everything.

Companies like ASUS keep the dream alive with concepts like the Transformer Book V. If they can stop Google and Microsoft shutting down their ideas then the one device to rule them all dream could still be achievable!

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