The Mobile Phone as Computer

Eric Lin writes:

Emerging applications are proving that the phone is no longer just a communications tool but a computing one. Handset hardware and software will evolve to support this new paradigm.

NEC has announced a new mobile chip with not one, but three ARM-based processors, in addition to a processor dedicated to media and sound all in a single, low-power unit. All these processors, or cores, will allow handsets to accomplish a number of intense tasks simultaneously. Dual-core processors for desktop computers have only recently become available, but this technology is already being applied to mobile processors, indicating how quickly handsets are evolving to match the PCs functionality. The companies that create desktop graphics processors are also developing more powerful chips for handsets, as they take on yet another function of the PC -- gaming.

Jeff Nolan's not buying this for the following reasons 1) the processing power is still limited, and the more processing power they build in the worse the heat problem becomes, 2) crappy displays, it will be solved eventually, maybe with OLEDs, but they still suck today, 3) bandwidth constrained, ironically, 4) specialized programming interfaces and user design limit appeal to developers.