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Motorola Atrix “is” the future of laptop-netbook-smartphone computing.

Out of all the gadgets at CES the one that really stood out for me was the Motorola Atrix. It is basically a full featured smartphone that can be docked into a laptop-netbook shell. When docked into the shell, the smartphone helps power a full size netbook screen and traditional netbook keyboard.

In the near future, why would you need a powerful smartphone, and a separate laptop which has its own CPU, memory, and disk? Why can’t it be just the same device where the laptop shell acts like a UI extension to the phone? All of your data would just be on one device, no data sync needed. When docked into the laptop shell, the device would still be able to leverage wireless networks with all the same connectivity benefits of a traditional laptop. The docked smartphone would simply become the main CPU, memory, and disk for the laptop shell.That is what I see when I look at the Motorola Atrix.

The same concept would also work for a tablet user experience. You would take your smartphone and attach it to the back of a tablet shell. The full tablet LCD would light up with the expanded user experience from your smartphone. The tablet would not have CPU, memory, or storage, all of that would be provided by your smartphone.

This has got to be the near future, no other model really makes sense. Of course for certain professions there will always be a need for a high end desktop computer or full powered laptop. But for the majority of us business users that only need email, browser, and local utility apps, why do we really need our laptop to be another standalone computer? In most cases an “expanded” smartphone experience would be perfect when we wanted a larger screen and keyboard.

And what if the docking connection from your smartphone to the laptop shell was a “standardized” connection so that your smartphone could be docked to “any” laptop shell? You would just take your smartphone with you and could plug it into any shell that you had available at home or work. The docking shell would just be a commodity, and not proprietary to a specific device manufacturer. You would buy the shell as a completely separate purchase from the smartphone and could pick the size, color, style, etc.

All of the operators have been pushing laptop data plans using usb modules in order to expand mobile network usage, but the Atrix concept is a shift in the opposite direction. It is basically promoting the “one device” model where the larger LCD and keyboard are just peripherals off of your smartphone.

The “Atrix” represents “The One” just like in the “Matrix”.

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