At CES 2011 Asus unveiled the EEE Pad Transformer TF101

At CES 2011 Asus unveiled the EEE Pad Transformer TF101 – a pill that might transform into a small laptop way to the optionally available keyboard dock. This changed into nearly a decade before Apple decided to do the equal with the Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro. But Asus’ aims have been lots extra than a easy 2-in-1, it changed into going to create the only computing system you’ll ever want.

This came simplest a yr later – enter the Asus PadFone. The call isn’t diffused, it’s a telephone that may become a tablet the use of the suitable tablet dock. And that tablet may want to attach to a keyboard dock, similar to the Transformer.

A phone Turns right into a tablet That becomes a laptop

A telephone • Turns into a pill • That becomes a pc

The cellphone itself had a four.3” Super AMOLED display with 540 x 960 px decision. This grew to a 10.1” LCD with 1,280 x 800 px decision when you plugged it into the pill dock, which also packed a 6,six hundred mAh battery (the cellphone itself had only a 1,520mAh cellular on board).

The keyboard dock added any other 6,600 mAh battery to the mix. And Asus turned into smart approximately how the gadget used its 3 batteries – the keyboard’s battery could drain first and charge ultimate. This manner the cellphone’s battery was continually saved at maximum rate. The pill dock similarly prioritized the smartphone’s battery.

Flashback: the telephone that became a tablet that was a computer that failed

As for the keyboard itself, it turned into at the small aspect (that is the equal of a 10.1” pc, after all). QWERTY keys apart, there was also a touchpad with a decent length for the time.

You may also use a stylus, which wasn’t truely a stylus even though it worked as one. It became a Bluetooth headset you may use to make and get hold of calls. The “stylus” had call and cling-up buttons or even a vibration motor, so you wouldn’t leave out an incoming name in case you have been faraway from the tablet/pc. And you virtually didn’t must take the cellphone out of its docks for each name.

Flashback: the telephone that turned into a pill that changed into a laptop that failed

This complete setup turned into pretty formidable because it became still the early days of Android. The PadFone launched with Android 4.Zero Ice Cream Sandwich. Crucially, it got here after 3.0 Honeycomb, which turned into committed to including a tablet UI to Android.

Still, the vanilla gadget had no support for split-display screen multitasking not to mention modern Desktop modes. Asus didn’t upload such capabilities on its very own, you can most effective have one energetic app on the display screen at a time. Perhaps that was for the better.

The telephone (and for that reason the tablet and laptop) became powered by using a Snapdragon S4 Plus with a dual-center Krait CPU walking at 1.Five GHz, paired with an Adreno 220 GPU. They best had 1GB of RAM among them, which wasn’t a whole lot for a computer even 8 years ago.

Flashback: the cellphone that became a pill that became a computer that failed

The apps had different troubles too, Android devs had been normally ignoring the tablet area so few apps had a tailor-made model of their UI for tablets (a smartphone UI stretched on a ten.1” display isn’t quite).

Nevertheless, the dream became a truth – one tool can be your cellphone, pill and laptop (using the best set of docks, of path). All your information and apps were in a single region, so that you could switch seamlessly among exceptional form elements relying on the state of affairs.

Flashback: the telephone that become a tablet that turned into a laptop that failed

The fact wasn’t quite as rosy, regrettably. Again, maximum apps weren’t geared up for pill and laptop operation. Also, at the same time as the cellphone + pill dock + pc dock weighed and much less than having 3 separate devices, they have been nonetheless pretty cumbersome and did upload to the overall price.

The Motorola Atrix, which become released a year earlier, ran into comparable problems. It cut the tablet out of the equation and just gave you a pc dock to plug the smartphone into. But this didn’t prevent from sporting a laptop bag and all you purchased for your problem become an underpowered pc with confined software (the Atrix did have a complete construct of the Firefox browser however still).

Flashback: the cellphone that changed into a pill that was a laptop that failed

Today we’re seeing a resurgence of similar ideas. Apple officially confirmed that it’s running on ARM-powered Macs, within the imply time you can dock an iPad Pro to the Magic Keyboard and for a kind-of ARM-powered MacBook Air experience. The modern-day iPadOS has complete support for keyboard and mouse/trackpad operation. And – more importantly – a suite of apps that understand how to multitask on a huge display screen.

Flashback: the smartphone that turned into a pill that was a pc that failed

This is going to reveal that what geek desires aren’t continually practical in reality. If they had been, the Asus Transformer Book V from 2014 could have succeeded – that changed into a true all-in-1 solution. Well, five-in-1, subsequently the “V”.

It starts offevolved with an Android cellphone. It may want to dock right into a 12.Five” pill that ran Windows eight.1 on an Intel Core CPU (so actual Windows, none of that RT nonsense). When docked, the smartphone's display could appear as a window inside Windows, so that you nevertheless had get right of entry to to the smartphone’s apps.

And you could make it go complete-screen, essentially turning this into an Android tablet. Docking the telephone additionally mounted its LTE connection to the Windows pill, so street warriors can use Internet at the go.

Of route, there was a keyboard dock as nicely. You may want to use simply the pill and keyboard as a Windows laptop whilst preserving the phone in your pocket. Or you could dock it to get an LTE-related Windows/Android pc.

Flashback: the cellphone that became a pill that was a laptop that failed

This feels like a device out of a movie, however it became very real. And yet you likely don’t consider it because it did not get traction (as did most of Asus' Transformer and PadFone efforts).

The use instances for phones, drugs and laptops by no means clearly overlapped enough to make such answers profitable. Even the visionary Steve Jobs became incorrect on this one, pills by no means ushered within the put up-PC generation for the very identical cause.