Those of you that follow the tech world closely enough might already think tablets are so last year. It’s not impressive when they get a power upgrade, as those upgrades are expected, and the industry norm of iterative upgrades don’t raise the specs enough to warrant a raised eyebrow. The future of the tablet seems to just be a stronger tablet, but what if that future involved getting rid of batteries and processors? A new patent aims to do just that.
 A recently published patent application, that happens to list Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as an inventor, describes a device similar to tablets that is essentially just a remote display. Imagine a tablet, but then you rip out all of its guttyworks — battery, processor, etc. — and leave the Retina-class display. What do you have? Perhaps the future of tablets, if this patent application ever becomes reality, at least. The tablet would work with the help of — you guessed it — cloud computing. A central box would handle all of the processing and beam it over to the device, and more amazingly, would also wirelessly power the device. (See: How wireless charging works.)
Oddly, the central box would also receive user input — voice commands, for example — from across the room, and process them so the user can control the device. This, though, would make it so your tablet is rendered useless if it were out of range of the box and couldn’t connect to the internet for whatever reason. Most likely, there would be an alternative tablet-side input.
Due to the processing power being handled offsite, the tablet’s power requirements would drastically drop, and could stay powered through the minimal amount of power provided by wireless charging.
If this seems a little useless because you’ll be stuck in the range of the control box, or at least stuck in the range of a WiFi signal, the patent application provides a scenario where this system would be useful. Like the (secretly expensive) Raspberry Pi or most Chromebooks (the Pixel notwithstanding), school would make an ideal environment for the remote display system. For example, the central processing and power box would be stationed in a classroom, and each student would receive a remote display. Considering the displays have most of their internal organs removed, the students wouldn’t be able to load them up with personal software, and the school could set the devices up how they wish through the central box. The system could also be used to deliver e-textbooks to students, removing the need to lug around stacks of heavy books.
The patent application points to tech outside of the remote display tablet as well. Considering Jeff Bezos is one of two inventors, this could mean that Amazon is looking to incorporate this tech into its Kindle somewhere down the line. The filing also makes note of other systems into which the tech could be incorporated, like car windshields, wireless earpieces, and glasses.
If you live in a big city or remote rural area, though, the tech’s reliance on being able to access the base station might make the idea seem quite hindered. If your city has a subway or you take an above-ground train to work, you’ll notice that you either frequently don’t have internet access, or it’s spotty at best. If you live in a remote rural area, you might not have internet access altogether whenever you leave your house. Hell, if you’re waiting around at a doctor’s office or even standing in a long line, you probably don’t have WiFi access, so it’d be quite difficult to connect to your base station and have your tablet access your data. If you think the response to that is, “Well, give it some local storage,” it still wouldn’t have a processor or battery. So, then you give it a processor and a way to power itself and now you have a standard tablet.
The system doesn’t seem ideal for personal, portable use, but based on the above education example, it does seem like a good tool for educational settings. | 