3 ms·
Can you plug your iPhone into a couple of 30" monitors, and use it as a workstation?
by wisty 13y ago
Can you plug your iPhone into a couple of 30" monitors, and use it as a workstation?
- wmf 13y agoIt's not clear that this is thermally possible.
- jl6 13y agoSure it is, just use an external CPU in the docking station.
- wmf 13y agoSo now your "docking station" is actually a separate computer; what part of the phone would it use? The storage?
- jl6 13y agoYes, it would be very useful to have a single OS image that could scale its user interface and capabilities to the hardware it finds attached at any given moment.
- evilduck 13y agoOSX already does this. Got a base model Macbook Air and a big powerful iMac or Mac Pro? Connect a thunderbolt or a firewire cable and boot in target disk mode, you'll boot from the Air's hard drive but get the full hardware capabilities of your iMac or Pro (better GPU, more CPU power, whatever).
- shabble 13y agoI wonder if it would be practical couple the CPU directly to an externally accessible thermal pad, and have some sort of docking station which includes additional cooling. There are probably better cooling options available (liquid, heatpipe?) if you could find a way to connect/disconnect them reliably and not compromise much on the mobile aspects of the design.
- PeterisP 13y agoWhy not? If it doesn't melt while being maximally used in my hands, why should it be thermally impossible to put it on the table while connected to an external screen? The processor is more powerful than many old computers, and the 30" screens need no more pixels than the iPhone screen already has.
- wisty 13y agoThe iPad 3 pushes 2,048 by 1,536 pixels. A single monitor 30" requires 2560 x 1600 (or maybe less, if it's crap). So ... I can see an iPhone being able to drive a single 30" monitor some time soon. People will be using their phones as desktops (if not serious workstations) sometime soon. And once they use them as desktops, phones won't be fast enough until they have performance comparable to workstations (which, as you point out, won't happen).