<story><title>Open Source PC That Fits in Your Pocket</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/meet-an-open-source-pc-that-can-fit-in-your-pocket</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yosamino</author><text>All the things you would use a phone for in the early 2010s:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  * Phone calls
  * Video calls over XMPP
  * Text&amp;#x2F;XMPP messaging
  * Web browsing
  * Document editing
  * Writing and receiving email
  * Playing music ( it had a built in FM transmitter - how cool was that!)
  * Setting Alarms
  * weather widgets
  * Writing PHP programms
  * Writing python programms
  * ssh-ing into servers
  * gps navigation
  * take and share pictures
  * multi-colored status LEDs 
  * it had usb-otg so you could use as a flash drive
  * share an gsm internet connection via USB

&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Some of these things work better with a touch screen - some work better with a slide-out physical keyboard... it was just a really good device.</text></item><item><author>ElCheapo</author><text>It was amazing at doing.... what? You&amp;#x27;ve just listed a bunch of hardware functionalities without actually saying what you managed to use it for.</text></item><item><author>yosamino</author><text>No. It&amp;#x27;s not a fantasy. The Nokia N900 was &lt;i&gt;amazing&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;It functioned as a phone with a touchscreen to deliver the experience that had now become the dominant one.&lt;p&gt;But also, by sliding up the screen, it had a fully featured keyboard, and essentially transmogrified into a &amp;quot;pc that fits into your pocket&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;So you could with a one handed push go from the touchscreen-only experience back to edit documents by using a combination of the keyboard and the touchscreen (with a stylus if neccessary).&lt;p&gt;I stopped using it because it lost software support and then the touchscreen stopped working, but I have it sitting here at my desk.&lt;p&gt;Every phone I have used since has been worse.</text></item><item><author>ElCheapo</author><text>Can we stop with this absolute fantasy about PCs that &amp;quot;fit in your pocket&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;The medium &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; the message, the form &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; the functionality.&lt;p&gt;Smartphones have been &amp;quot;pocketable PCs&amp;quot; for more than a decade already, but are dumbed down because their inputs and outputs are limited. You can&amp;#x27;t type effectively, your screen is small, your battery is limited. Would you want a command line interface on your Smart TV using only a remote? How about XFCE? Or GNOME? No, for a Smart TV we have purposefully made OSs that are limited in functionality such as Kodi, LibreELEC and others specifically because of the type of inputs and outputs needed.&lt;p&gt;I think the only way we could ever get a portable PC experience on the go is by having AR glasses project a full desktop in front of us and let us control it with an imaginary keyboard and touchpad by somehow analyzing our hand movements on a hard surface in front of us. But that&amp;#x27;s only if we get to a point where said devices are fast and hold a decent battery, which, with current technology, is impossible.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>danans</author><text>&amp;gt;   * Writing PHP programms&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;  * Writing python programms&lt;p&gt;Honest question: what is a real world use case for writing PHP or Python programs on a tiny laptop with a 7&amp;quot; display that wouldn&amp;#x27;t be better served by a 13&amp;quot; laptop.   I can&amp;#x27;t imagine writing code while standing on a train, for example.  But more important, I&amp;#x27;m having trouble imagining what kind of work situation would require that.</text></comment>
<story><title>Open Source PC That Fits in Your Pocket</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/meet-an-open-source-pc-that-can-fit-in-your-pocket</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yosamino</author><text>All the things you would use a phone for in the early 2010s:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  * Phone calls
  * Video calls over XMPP
  * Text&amp;#x2F;XMPP messaging
  * Web browsing
  * Document editing
  * Writing and receiving email
  * Playing music ( it had a built in FM transmitter - how cool was that!)
  * Setting Alarms
  * weather widgets
  * Writing PHP programms
  * Writing python programms
  * ssh-ing into servers
  * gps navigation
  * take and share pictures
  * multi-colored status LEDs 
  * it had usb-otg so you could use as a flash drive
  * share an gsm internet connection via USB

&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Some of these things work better with a touch screen - some work better with a slide-out physical keyboard... it was just a really good device.</text></item><item><author>ElCheapo</author><text>It was amazing at doing.... what? You&amp;#x27;ve just listed a bunch of hardware functionalities without actually saying what you managed to use it for.</text></item><item><author>yosamino</author><text>No. It&amp;#x27;s not a fantasy. The Nokia N900 was &lt;i&gt;amazing&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;It functioned as a phone with a touchscreen to deliver the experience that had now become the dominant one.&lt;p&gt;But also, by sliding up the screen, it had a fully featured keyboard, and essentially transmogrified into a &amp;quot;pc that fits into your pocket&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;So you could with a one handed push go from the touchscreen-only experience back to edit documents by using a combination of the keyboard and the touchscreen (with a stylus if neccessary).&lt;p&gt;I stopped using it because it lost software support and then the touchscreen stopped working, but I have it sitting here at my desk.&lt;p&gt;Every phone I have used since has been worse.</text></item><item><author>ElCheapo</author><text>Can we stop with this absolute fantasy about PCs that &amp;quot;fit in your pocket&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;The medium &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; the message, the form &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; the functionality.&lt;p&gt;Smartphones have been &amp;quot;pocketable PCs&amp;quot; for more than a decade already, but are dumbed down because their inputs and outputs are limited. You can&amp;#x27;t type effectively, your screen is small, your battery is limited. Would you want a command line interface on your Smart TV using only a remote? How about XFCE? Or GNOME? No, for a Smart TV we have purposefully made OSs that are limited in functionality such as Kodi, LibreELEC and others specifically because of the type of inputs and outputs needed.&lt;p&gt;I think the only way we could ever get a portable PC experience on the go is by having AR glasses project a full desktop in front of us and let us control it with an imaginary keyboard and touchpad by somehow analyzing our hand movements on a hard surface in front of us. But that&amp;#x27;s only if we get to a point where said devices are fast and hold a decent battery, which, with current technology, is impossible.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>throw10920</author><text>While all of these things are &lt;i&gt;possible&lt;/i&gt; on a tiny PC, many of them are very sub-optimal - like how many languages are Turing-complete but &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; of equivalent use (e.g. assembly is not as useful as Rust in the vast majority of programming domains).&lt;p&gt;Things like &amp;quot;writing PHP&amp;#x2F;Python programs&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;document editing&amp;quot;, while things that you &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt; do on a pocket-sized laptop, are &lt;i&gt;much&lt;/i&gt; better to do on a real laptop or desktop. A tiny PC will strain your eyes, decrease your reading, typing and interaction speed, hurt your neck, and react slowly relative to a full computer - regardless of whether you&amp;#x27;re using a soft-keyboard or a physical (but tiny) hardware keyboard.&lt;p&gt;Although ElCheapo may have thrown a lot of unnecessary junk into their comments, their point &amp;quot;The medium &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; the message, the form &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; the functionality.&amp;quot; is still true - you don&amp;#x27;t want to use C# for tiny (kilobytes RAM) embedded devices and you don&amp;#x27;t want to use this pocket PC for writing code, even though you &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt;.</text></comment>