So that make the smartphone very different from a pocket computer? So tell me why you can install a computer os on a smartphone. and tell my why there is android laptop?
Once, when my friend moved flats, we got a supermarket trolley, loaded it full of stuff, and then pushed it to the new flat, unloaded it, returned, filled it, pushed it back, and so on for the better part of a day. Curiously, the trolley didn't turn into a flatbed truck. Similarly, in the scene in The Blues Brothers with the car chase inside the mall, neither the bluesmobile nor the policecars turn into supermarket trolleys, even though they are used in a mall. Funny that.
Are you seriously saying that you do not understand the difference between a desktop-ish computer and a smartphone? Really?
An smartphone is primarily a communications device. As such, it prioritizes certain things. One of them is communications hardware - mic and earpiece placement, headset integration, video en/decoding, and so on. Another is interface integration - it is expected that you'll talk on the phone, and whilst talking you'll need to browse through your emails to check when that meeting was, and transfer that to your calendar, so that you can then book a meeting with the person you're talking to by setting a time and adding the contact details from your adress book. A third is a well-defined stack of interrupt priorities - It is a given that if you play a game, you'll expect it to be interrupted by a notification from your calendar. That, in turn, has less priority than an incoming phone call. All the necessary things for communications - Calendars, Phone software, Text message software - are assumed to be constantly running in the background: You do expect your phone to notify you when a text message comes in - If you "turn on" your text messaging app and find out that you have 10 messages from your girlfriend in the last 3 hours which you didn't get because it was "off", you'd be less than happy. A fourth thing is that a communications device is designed to be used in the public eye, and as such to conform to certain aesthetics and usage patterns.
All these things are necessary for something to achieve a good smartphone user experience. If something of this is lacking, it will be a severe fault in the devices' usability as a smartphone.
A general computer is a device where I, as a user, is fundamentally in control. I might work on some documents for class, surf the forums, program a game in Python, listen to some music. Sometimes several of these at once. However, what is done when is under the control of the user. If I'm going to concentrate on some code, I close the forum and facebook tabs of the browser, so as not to be interrupted. If I'm going to listen to some music, I switch off all controls and black the screen to save charge. I expect to be able to type fairly conventionally, to be able to handle windows on a desktop (usually, in the modern times) or decide not to have any window system at all. The design of a pocket computer kind of device, then, must allow for this flexibility - in application, in interfacing, in input and output devices, and so on. A computer which interrupts my coding with an unwanted signal is a badly designed computer. A computer which cannot read files from a USB stick, or which cannot display several documents, or which won't allow me to compile and run my own code, is a badly designed computer.
A gaming device is designed for invisibility, really. The point of a gaming device is to serve as an intermediary between the gamer and the game. The controls must be responsive and positive, and placed in a way that is comfortable for the gamers hands. The screen must be fast enough to render the action without tearing or ghosting. In use, the machine must be dedicated to the game - You do not play two games at the same time, you expect the screen to be filled with this one thing and nothing else to interrupt you until you're done. Technically, it must be predictable in power and power usage - The programmer must reliably know the resources available to the game, so that a section that went through in perfect 50 frames/second in testing does not suddenly lurch down into a slideshow framerate because the device suddenly prioritized something different.
And so on and so forth.
These are very different things, and are designed with very different goals. ED has stated, and most of the community agree (I believe) that the goal here is Gaming Device and (possibly as a slightly second priority) Pocket Computer. That is why we have long, involved discussions about action button placement and scaler chips - Because they are important to the Gaming Device experience. We also have very strong opinions on keyboard layouts, firmware distribution and open drivers - These things are important for the Pocket Computer use case. One might say that the great advantage of the Pandora is that it has managed to strike a good balance between those two use cases - With gaming controls AND usable keyboard, with a desktop distro AND a no-trouble switch into fullscreen gaming, and so on. But you can't add a third use case to the mix and not lose important things from the first two. They are different things.
And the fact that I can install Debian on my phone does not matter - it rather strengthens the argument because, well...it makes it very obvious that the smart phone is very badly built for delivering a good desktop experience. And I can install Android on my netbook, but that does not make my netbook into something that can replace a smart phone - It makes my netbook to be a crippled machine, because the hardware is not designed for the smartphone needs. There are dedicated Android laptops. Do you think they are a reasonable replacement for a smartphone? Of course they aren't - The hardware and the android customisations are not designed for that. The laptop does not become a smartphone any more than the trolley becomes a truck.
Do you really want that I bring the official definition for computer?
Oh, please do. It will be so amusing.
