Dreaming of a Super *N*

These small, portable, and even pocketable devices are near and dear to my heart. I had one of the first TRUE portable pocket computers (in 1988 I bought a Tandy pocket calculator bonded to a leatherette case, with alphanumeric keys in the leatherette material. Ran BASIC.) Since then, I've bought "pocket organizers," multifunction watches, monochrome PDAs, HP Jornada, HP iPaq RX3715, Fujistu P1120, and the Nokia N800. Don't get me wrong, I love my N800. But there are so many options and tactile changes I would like to see. This always leads me to overthink the whole design, which makes me a big-time geek. But the portability to performance/utility ratio can be much higher, with current or shortly arriving technology. Here is a breakdown of what I think would make the pocket-sized computer perfect and I will also show how in five years or so every family will buy at least one, down to the last grizzled uber-noob technophobe.

These are the main features that must be present:
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-Unlocked 3rd gen wireless for data/voice calls. Your choice to enable or not.
-Bluetooth cell connection and WiFi. Of course. Maybe ratified "N" if that day ever comes :0)
-At least a 2.0 Mpixel camera with rotate function. Good optics, too. A REAL Camcorder 30fps support. Hardware key mapping settings.
-Hardware keyboard (possibly clamshell, my personal choice, with low power outside display.) Maybe two versions of the same device for those who like soft KBs and thinner profiles.
-x86 hardware/software support *maybe*, preinstalled Linux system similar to Maemo for small device navigation, but with Ubuntu or Mandriva features. Built-in kinetic scroll everywhere.
-Most importantly, a solid state hard drive (SSD) with at least 32GB. Super-fast, no moving parts, better temperature range and power savings. It's lighter and smaller, too. These days you can get a board-only SSD that is about as thick as a motherboard PCB without any chips on it: about 2-3mm! And it's not very wide or tall, smaller than a 1.8"HDD in most tiny devices! Stack it on the mainboard as a daughter card 1-2mm apart. Maybe squeeze two SD slots in the gap between!!
-Touchscreen similar to n800 in use. Better backlight (LED)
-Grow LCD to fit bezel. N800 overall size is already near perfect.
-SirfStar III or better GPS antenna built-in
-Turn the home/menu/back keys into another d-pad and locate it on the other side like a PSP. This is good for screen rotation and re-mapping keys to either d-pad, or gaming on it.
-Choice of regular battery or extended with increased overall thickness. Battery must run x86 code for at least five hours per charge with preinstalled OS, 3 hours with severe use (read: Macrohog Vista)
-A freakin' consumer IR port dang it! Preinstalled IR database and learning remote software with remote templates you can change to match your equipment. There must be NO COMPROMISE with this feature.
-Housing color/finish choices for men, women, children, professionals, dang near everybody.
-Streaming media server software from the device to any TV or PC over WiFi. Eventually this will take over the market anyway.

The future is coming faster than you think.
Streaming is a word we will get very used to. In the next few years, there will be performance components in mobile devices with the explosions in storage and multi-core and SOC ICs. Archictecture in coding and standards will become more organised to make all devices from different manufacturers work in a similar way especially if the hardware is x86. An open source OS will provide a lower cost device and more geeks will code for it, increasing the diversity of software and possibly turning Microsoft on its head, as less people will depend on bloated desktop PCs and be buying more open source mobile devices. Right now in the mobile front, Microsoft isn't doing so well and open-source devices with Nokia's Maemo blow it away functionally. Mobile gaming is next for the micro-pc-PDA-device with more games being ported onto it, instead of using dedicated gaming consoles or handsets. If there is a huge user base of them (Read: devices like this, because of it becoming ubiquitous) then more companies will code for its hardware, graphics chipset makers will get serious, and get the snowball effect in motion.

There are quite a few casual onlookers of the iPhone and N800 devices to make it very tempting for everyone to want one. This leads me back to streaming: with the possibilities of set-top boxes and Orb or other servers, more people will be interested in getting their media remotely to devices. This sells more pocketable devices. And also makes it more fruitful for manufacturers to design more robust hardware. Eventually, the devices will become so good that people will be able to carry more and more with them. Less need for streaming now, but of course this also degrades the sales of dedicated PCs and satellite dishes or tuner boxes (because your device is online all the time and you get your media from "comcast CableWeb" or whatever the service will be called, and you can get new monitors and TVs with built-in wireless streaming recievers!) Now the market has come full circle. You have one device to carry with you. There are no more dedicated MP3 players or cell phones or media players or GPS navigation devices or consumer digital cameras and camcorders. They have all become obsolete, and small children get them handed down. Even a bum off the street finds old iPods and TomToms at this point. One device accesses all forms of communication through three separate wireless connections for redundancy and flexibility and you stream from the device to the TV.

Don't you sign up for separate TV and voice and data in home and mobile forms right now? What does that cost? $200? Imagine a couple years from now when you will be able to get all three and carry ALL THREE with you everywhere, displaying any of the data on it easily with large monitors wirelessly. Or reverse the scheme and play from one device to another, effectively sharing two user's data on the fly in the most flexible way. All of this should be available once the old-school providers stop raping their customers for the cost of infrastructure upkeep. They are already getting wise to internet phones and media streamers. And some TV networks may get smart and offer single channels through a third-party clearinghouse, it's been randied about already. So it will be wise for them (after some time losing sales of 3-5 dollar tv shows, 25 cent text messages, and no overages by most users on voice) to change their ways to stomp out the competition (Read: make them look less greedy to the more aware consumer) This will force them to go out of business or change over to IP distribution. Maybe there will be a consortium and infrastructure will be handled by third parties from a "condo" fee each one will share to do business together. I'll bet the average user will sign up for a master plan ala-carte with only the TV channels they want, 24x7 data, VOIP phone with no roaming or long distance, unlimited everything else for $100 a month. High-speed towers are going up and will cover the earth minus the areas satellite can only cover, and maybe everyone will end up on that system after that. I give it three technical generations before this dream will be reality. So maybe four or five years? Nanocomputer technology arrival will be around then. So it's a given :0)
And in case you've never heard of the real Nanotechnology and what it will offer, I suggest going to foresight.org for a browse. Maybe the points about merging media providers is over the top, but rest assured the devices will become the only ones we need- with peripherals wirelessly attached, it will be like using a desktop anyway. Laptops outsold desktops early in 2007. Soon we will only have mobile devices for consumer use, and "tower" pcs will be server-only. Case closed!

That was an amazing read. I could totally see it! Thanks for a glimpse into the future.

BTW you forgot wireless charging! http://www.wildcharge.com/

Yes, wireless charging too!!!! Very much so. This is a very cool concept that will be available in a year or two from what I've read. The tech will need to be embedded in batteries so we can retrofit older devices with this capability. Wouldn't that be great? Eventually, built-in generators in devices extracting the cosmic field of energy are possible also- maybe in our lifetimes, too.
Check out youtube for "what the bleep do we know" from monaszy35 (make sure each clip is from that user, they split the film properly and other submitters will have different clip points!) and watch the videos starting at number 1 all the way to 14 or whatever the end is... it lasts about 2 hours total and is a real eye-opener and jewel for casual science lovers. It also will tell you what I've been saying all along about what life is, god is, and everything else you ever wanted to know on a deep level. Everything in the universe that we perceive, imagine, and feel is energy. No, I didn't post the film or make it. But I agree with everything stated in it!

Even closer to the present, it won't be long before we see circuitry embedded into devices and materials for the life of the product (non-repairable, but extremely durable and water/dust/vibration/shock resistant)
Some devices are close to that point now. Look at the way Apple engineers its products. Imagine the iPhone was a solid block with no seams at all... not to mention then you can go wild with the shapes of devices and not break the bank with engineering/construction concerns. Granted, I don't want Apple devices but I will say they are nice pieces of hardware, and sexy too. It's the software that I'm not fond of!