I don't know about you, but a consumption-only "first and only computing device" sounds incredibly dystopian. I get that they have a positive impact, but it feels like we could be doing better.
Doing anything but consumption and lightweight content discovery on smartphones is basically a farce. They are not usable as general-purpose creation machines.
> Doing anything but consumption and lightweight content discovery on smartphones is basically a farce.
I disagree, even when talkingn about a smartphone as a human interface device and not, as was the actual context of the thread, a computing device.
Having a, say, DeX-enabled Android (or even potentially powered by fairly traditional Linux, if one doesn’t just use a major maker device with stock software) smartphone as a computing device doesn’t preclude standard desktop I/O devices fo interact with it in manner very similar to a standard desktop PC.
> They are not usable as general-purpose creation machines.
Again, as an exclusive computing device, they are just about as much as is any computing device.
Even as an exclusive HID, there’s a giant excluded middle between “consumption only” and “not usable as general purpose creation machines”.
What makes a smartphone a smartphone is the ability to use it with just the touchscreen. A smartphone with desktop peripherals is just that, a desktop. What I am arguing is that a bare smartphone (aka what most of those people in the developing world can afford) cannot meaningfully serve, due to being a form factor with a very imprecise input method, as a creation platform for any sort of precise content.
> What makes a smartphone a smartphone is the ability to use it with just the touchscreen
You seem to be conflating the ability to be used with a limited interface with a restriction to be used with only a particular interface. I desktop PC has the ability to be used without a graphics tablet. It would be a much more limited creation device if it were restricted to being used without one. And the same is true of everything that isn’t a touchscreen, microphone, or other built in human interface and smartphones. But a smartphone as an exclusive computing device does not imply the limitations of its built-in interfaces, since having external interfaces is also a standard feature of the class.
While I agree with your definitions of what a computation device is, I also don't see Android being developed on Android in the near future. So many UX conceptual problems won't allow this, so I think that as long as computers are required to build smartphones, they cannot be described as "general purpose" machines.
