How many times have you heard pundits, experts, retail associates and reporters incorrectly refer to Windows Phone 8 as Windows 8 Phone?  In the future they may be right…

It may seems a little early to be talking about the ‘9’ timeframe, but I only go that ‘high’ because I think we are waiting for hardware to catch up to a point where the following is possible.  We currently have ARM-based phones, with upcoming Baytrail and Haswell processors for tablets.

Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 share the same kernel.  They also share somewhat of the same app model, including binary compatibility with Portable Class libraries.  Current and upcoming phones have HD resolutions meaning that a 90%+ common WinRT runtime and UI design isn’t that far away – you can see this in leaked changes to Windows 8 Blue with the swiping of the Start tiles to All apps.

With increasing phone power and resolution, it seems inevitable that more of the full windows experience will come to a phone form-factor, especially if it’s dockable!

I’ve predicted Microsoft Surface Mini devices that dock (which appears to be coming true) or wirelessly dock along with future ‘shelltops’.  Given enough power (that perhaps dynamically revs up) in the phone, there’s no reason that your phone cannot become your PC working in all of these scenarios:

• As a standalone phone – with optional wireless display projection
• Wirelessly working through a tablet ‘shell’ – this is the only solution until rolled ‘paper’ displays come around.
• Wirelessly working with a ‘shelltop’
• Docking (physically or wirelessly) into desktop monitor(s), keyboard and mouse, etc.

Early devices may have performance somewhere between current Clovertrail and future Baytrail devices and power consumption may be an issue.  Where additional computer power is needed, Azure will provide… (SkyEngine anyone?).

Want to ramp up the excitement?  Add in glasses with voice.  The glasses become the wireless display and control for your phone!  See those people walking around with bluetooth headsets on…

It’s going to happen and I think it’s very exciting.