This smartphone-powered laptop by Razer is a brilliant idea

We have seen a few attempts at using a smartphone to power a PC. Microsoft has Continuum. Samsung has their DeX Station which, similar to Continuum, allows you to turn your phone into a computer using a cable and a dock. Smartphone manufacturer, Razer, has come up with Razer Linda, a laptop with a smartphone dock.

Razer Linda is basically a laptop shell with a screen, keyboard, and giant battery, but with no internal processing power. Yes; no processor, no RAM, no internal storage, no motherboard. Insert a Razer phone in the smartphone dock and the phone handles all the processing.

Sounds like a brilliant idea. Buy a Razer Phone, buy the Razer Linda, and you can use your smartphone as a laptop anytime you want. Just insert the phone in the dock area – situated where a laptop’s touchpad is traditionally located. In use, the smartphone screen becomes the touchpad.

As mentioned earlier, Linda has a giant battery, so your phone undergoes charging while in use as a PC. This smartphone-powered laptop is still a concept, but I can see how it is a much more convenient smartphone-PC solution than Microsoft’s Continuum or Samsung’s DeX.

Meanwhile, there are initiatives to use just the smartphone OS to power a PC. Jide came up with Remix OS to deploy Android OS on PCs. That approach eliminates the smartphone completely and gives you a standalone PC, quite different from the smartphone-as-a-PC solution.

Razer Linda In Demonstration

Here is a demonstration video of Project Razer Linda in use.

Hopefully, Razer will see this beyond concept stage and produce for the market. Continuum requires a desktop. So does DeX. A smartphone-powered laptop like Razer Linda is more portable and convenient to use, requiring no cable or extra dock. This is exactly what the doctor prescribed.