My first Windows PC, fondly remembered, offered a Pentium CPU clocked at 133 MHz and 32MB RAM. My current phone, which is annoying, has an XScale CPU clocked at 312 MHz and 64MB RAM. While it's not particularly clever or special to note that yesterday's supercomputer is today's toaster, Sony Ericsson is doing something about it, creating the Multimedia Cradle, a console with a 7" display, keyboard, mic and speakers, designed to unleash your cellphone's latent capacity as a fully-functional computer.
It's just a patent right now, and perhaps intended merely to cover a "just in case" base that no-one expects to become an actual, made-'n'-marketed product. We already own much more powerful computers, after all, and tethering really isn't that difficult. As a basis for public kiosks, hooked up to printers, scanners and ultra-fast internet connections, however, it has sea legs.
Replace the PC with your cellphone and Sony Ericsson Multimedia Cradle [Unwiredview via Gizmodo]
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