alt Hacker NewsStill waiting for the day when I can get rid of my work laptop and replace it with a phone entirely. Technically it's already possible, but it's just not practical until I can easily run docker containers on my phone. Also the samsung desktop mode is a bit underwhelming right now.
If this is not the default in the next decade I'm gonna riot. Hotels could replace the TV with a big computer screen and the corner chair with an office chair. Even a cheap hotel room could be an office without anyone having to bring their own toys with them. Just the phone in your pocket.
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I can't understand what exactly is in this dream you want to become true. It sounds like you want a portable device with physical keyboard, and reasonable screen size. Which is laptop.
The last thing I want is work following me wherever I go. I even have a separate phone for all the work-related stuff that I only take with me when absolutely necessary. Which is almost never except when I'm oncall.
Well, if you have BYOD policy consider yourself blessed. Many are simply not allowed to do whatever on their managed devices.
My recommendation is use OpenSSH (alternative: Wireguard, Tailscale for whole TCP/IP stack), tmux (or equivalent, there are alternatives such as zellij and rmux), and a keyboard (wired is more secure, YMMV). Then you have a thin client. Run Docker remotely, on a far more capable device than whatever your smartphone is. With Waydroid or another variant of remote Wayland you could even have the GUI part working.
I was able to do the above 5 years ago on Ubuntu and Arch. I am sure you can still do it nowadays.
One caveat. Don't do this in environments where you cannot auth in privacy. You must be able to trust your hardware, too. Don't bring this setup to e.g. China. You can put a strong password on your SSH private key, rotate it, and combine OTP/MFA.
Which leads me to say: I am puzzled how people can work in environments like coffeeshops, cafes, and I even see laptops used for work in swimming pool where I go weekly. Your screen can be viewed, recorded at all time, and I doubt the users are aware of that. Even passwords can be recorded.
Maybe rent a cheap VM for Docker?
I often think to myself when using my iPhone, there is no way I could get desktop work done with this. Can’t recall right now why I have said so but I think it had to do with keeping multiple apps open side by side.
For example this year I have been car shopping and I keep multiple windows open; this would be much harder on my iPhone. Maybe not so much an iPad.
Though it might be a while before hotels start offering Aeron Classic chairs in their rooms.
I want this too, though I suspect the hard part is less compute and more the boring peripheral/ecosystem stuff
Postmarketos can run the containers, however a 4k desktop environment is still a bit sluggish
Windows Phone let you do this with Continuum ten years ago: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/01/14/conti...
Like the rest of the WP ecosystem, never really took off enough.