What I see potentially happening someday is that smartphones will have the same computing power of a desktop. At home, the smartphone will be plugged into a docking station that has a graphics card accelerator. By plugging the phone into the docking station, users will have keyboards, large monitors etc. HDTVs will have docking adapters so that the TV screen can be either a full monitor or display the phone's info in a window (some HDTVs already have IPod adapters). One could hope that there would be only one broadband internet bill that covers both mobile and connected requirements.

Essentially, the end user experience will be the same as it is today. The only difference would be that the computing power is put into a smaller portable device that the person carries with them. That device doesn't need to have a fast graphics card built into it any more than today's computers require them. Current desktops are built to be expanded with a dedicated graphics card if needed. Today, laptop docking stations have multiple monitor outputs even though the laptop doesn't. Take the same expansion capabilities being used now, add a few more, and make them work with a more powerful smartphone. That phone won't have a quadcore chip, but an adapter could be built to allow it to interface with a quad chip on the adpater. Portable computing needs don't need to be as powerful as what's needed at home. Offload that computing power to the docking station.

Smartphones aren't powerful enough to do that now. They can take the place of having to carry around an MP3 player, a pocket ebook reader, and a few other electronic devices. Why carry around a pile of different things when one might do the trick? I've already abandoned having a laptop for a netbook for my portable computing needs.  The netbook isn't powerful enough for everything I do on a computer, but plugging in a monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse makes it a reasonable substitute. Doing the same with a more powerful smartphone would make it a viable option--particularly if docking stations are beefed up to provide all the additional computing power a person would require.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon