Do <i>not</i> sink your money into this vaporware (it's a flexible funding campaign, so he gets <i>any</i> money that is pledged, even if he doesn't hit the goal). There's a reason why the Apples / Samsungs / Motorolas / Sonys of the world have hundreds of people working on new phones. This single dude doesn't have a prayer in the world of pulling this off.<p>The two red flags:<p><pre><code> 1. No functional device. Just some renders and a physical block of aluminum with glass over it.
2. No "here's my team of 50 people with loads of experience"</code></pre>
Every time I see a project like this I'm inspired to create a Kickstarter to bring cold fusion to the world.<p>Seriously guys, I'm an experienced software engineer with "a strong team in various backgrounds", this totally means I can pull off cold fusion, right?<p>My experience in the software services space certainly increases my credibility in the massive-power-generation-hardware space.<p>Sigh.<p>I think there should be a new de facto rule: at least half of your Kickstarter/Indiegogo/whatever page needs to be about you, your team, and why you think you can pull this off, and why we should regard you as anything other than ambitious, clueless, inexperienced, and tackling someone <i>way</i> above your level.
Sooo... basically the Asus Padfone but without the comfort of being made by a renowned hardware manufacturer and the nice feeling you have knowing it actually exists and you can buy it.<p>I see a bright future for this product[idea] indeed!...
/s
This has all the trappings of something that sounds like a good idea in theory but will most likely falter in the marketplace.<p>Considering how cheap you can get a laptop or tablet these days with a much faster CPU, more memory etc than a smartphone.<p>Also considering that it's going to be a pain in the ass to go around hooking/unhooking your phone from every device that you want to use. The software for each device is likely to need to be different too or provide a farily sub-par experience, leading to a lot of confusion.<p>Also , if you lose your phone you're not just losing your phone but also the brains behind all your other devices.
This will never work well because of a very simple fact, the phone experience, still one of the main aspect considered nowadays when purchasing a phone, would be seriously diminished when the phone is docked because you would have to use a bluetooth headset to answer the calls and it would be impossible to see who is calling you if you move away from the docked phone for a minute, because you won't probably carry a laptop around or because you probably won't take the time to remove the phone from the dock to light up a cigarette.
I'm not sure if this will be the best solution for the problem. But I do belive that in some point we'll have a sort of device like this one.<p>Must of us (pragmatic programmers, hackers, entrepreneurs) are always looking for resource efficiency, we're always looking for DRY. The way we manage our devices is broken, why do I need to install 4 times every single app in my ipad, android phone, PC and laptop? Why do I need 4 different processors, why do I need RAM distributed through all my devices?<p>I think this is a great idea, and we hackers would love it. But this solution may have some downsides though. I think there must be a single OS for both PC and Mobile, it just should change its interface, and I'm not sure if the power of my phone would be enough for a PC experience yet, anyways I hope this idea come to reality soon!
Even if this guy was legit and the product worked as advertised, I still think it is a terrible idea.<p>Having multiple devices is useful. If they need to shared data, do it wireslessly, or through the cloud.<p>Otherwise I have these empty husks lying around my house that are useless without my phone.<p>The motorola atrix "lapdock" is a similar product idea. It is 78% on sale on amazon. I hated it the moment I saw it.<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/AT-Laptop-Dock-Motorola-ATRIX/dp/B004M17D62" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/AT-Laptop-Dock-Motorola-ATRIX/dp/B004M...</a>
The only thing interesting about this to me is that they are going to finally try and force Canonical's hand at making Ubuntu for Android a reality. It's already tempting to leave the laptop at home when traveling for business, but there are always a couple of times when I'd be dead in the water if all I had was Android itself. Theoretically I could RDC/SSH into a remote PC, but that's a pita when all you need to do is make a couple of edits on a document or perform a similarly minor function.
I'm concerned about the laptop mounting design. If you were using the laptop in a public place, what's to stop someone swiping the phone from the back of the screen and running?
Have all the specs been left out or am I missing something? .. Anyway - ignoring that!<p>Interestingly the Perks/Rewards for this are a departure from what other KickStarter and Indiegogo campaigns have offered... Even the highest level ($10,000) doesn't seem to "buy" you a phone..
I think they should ditch the idea of docking devices and just focus on making good low power / inexpensive computers. If you're already paying for the screen, battery, enclosure, etc why not just throw in the cheap SoC and make it a standalone device?
I can't imagine it costs less than $1 million to bring this concept to reality with all these options. How much did Apple spend on development of the first iPhone?
This is not a terrible idea, but it feels like a hugely niche product. Motorola has tried this already with the Atrix and it has yet to take off. Maybe Ubuntu will fix that, but I am not so sure. If this is a good phone experience and a crappy PC experience, nobody is going to care. This needs to be both a great phone and a great PC. Otherwise it's just a phone.<p>Also, why is this not using Kickstarter? It seems like Kickstarter is "the place" to raise money for something like this, so it's likely that it won't raise as much money as it could just because of the site they're using.