iPhone, a next potential thin client?

I've blogged about this before but after discussing it with friends and colleagues recently I got a new eye-opener. Looking at thin clients on the market today many of them has equal or less performance compared to the iPhone 3G(S).

As you may know Citrix has release an application called Citrix Receiver allowing you connect to a Citrix server and control Microsft Windows applications from your iPhone. As this may be a step in the right direction it's really not enough as you're limited by the size of your screen on the iPhone.

Looking at patents filed by Apple there's one that comes to mind within this category; #20080002350. This patent describes how you would be able to dock your MacBook (Pro) in an iMac looking device (see MacRumors). I haven't read the details of what this patent covers as far as which devices that's potential candidates but the iPhone surely could be one in conjunction with a remote X like environment like Sun offers using it's thin clients.

Another touch which Gizmodo posted about is to make something similar to what Asus is planning to release soon. A keyboard with a built-in computer. However in this case the computer would be the phone and the keyboard would really just be a docking-station.

So Apple, hopefully you're R&D department has someone reading blogs and ideas how Apples products could be utilized, and if so, dump the projector stupidity and give us a solution to use the iPhone as a thin client.

Dear Santa Jobs

The other day me and my colleagues were discussing what the next step for the iPhone could be. One of them proposed that it could make sense to integrate the mini-DisplayPort, and further use it as a portable computer. This idea tingled me a lot. If I would be able to carry my actual computer in my pocket, dock it and be ready to run with the data and apps it would be golden. What might make more sense is to put some of the cababilities in the dock, say core OS but let the iPhone do the actual CPU work.

Looking at the technical aspect of this there might be some possibilities using the Intel Atom CPU which supports clock-frequencies of 800Mhz-1.87GHz. The current CPU in the iPhone is an ARM 1176 620@412 MHz. If the iPhone were to use the Atom CPU it could run at a slower clock-rate in "phone-mode" and faster in "computer-mode". As far as the graphics goes this might be a more valid concern, I've some doubts that the PowerVR GPU would be able to handle the 1920x1200 pxls of an Apple Cinema Display.

So please Apple and Mr. Santa Jobs get to work. I bet this would tingle more people than me!