How the cell phone is becoming a PC

Mobile phones have a screen, keyboard, storage for personal information such as contacts, e-mail, documents, the ability to play music and video files, play some games, spreadsheet programs, communications capabilities and they can even get infected by viruses. But wait a minute. Doesn't this sound like a lot like personal computers (PCs)?

A mobile phone has substantially all of the computing capabilities desired by a large fraction of the public. Why then would someone want to go to the trouble of installing and maintaining a personal computer (PC)? The PC has a larger keyboard and screen, a larger storage capacity, can play more sophisticated games, and has a faster communications capability.

This is a plan for building an appliance into which a mobile phone plugs and that extends the phone's capabilities without requiring the consumer to become a system administrator or be aware that he or she owns more than a phone. In the rest of this document we will call the new device "The Appliance".

Read on over here.