"How do you answer your phone if it is powering your desktop?"
You'll have a camera & speakers or headset either integrated into your monitor, or plugged into it, just like almost every workplace computer does. So you just click the green "answer phone" button.
But then your assuming that the person will have a headset, or worse have the call come through the speakers connected to the computer.
I imagine that currently 99% of phone calls are answered by the person picking up their phone, breaking this pattern would be difficult.
If it was a purely enterprise device then maybe it could work, as you could make assumptions about headsets etc, but I still don't see it being better than what we currently have.
Also if I have a desk, I have enough space and power for a high end computer, a mobile computer unit that could convert into a phone would never compete in terms of power with a desktop (or even laptop). Why restrict yourself to your most limiting use case? If you need a mobile computer/phone with a tiny processor that sips at the battery use that, then if you need a huge multi CPU multi GPU system that knows it will never be unplugged from its 1600W power supply use that. The mobile compute unit will be compromised in both these use cases.
> Also if I have a desk, I have enough space and power for a high end computer, a mobile computer unit that could convert into a phone would never compete in terms of power with a desktop (or even laptop).
It doesn't have to be an either/or. You can think of it as an "expansion bus" situation. You can have a bunch of compute power on the desk, but still a relatively "dumb" terminal. It can augment the mobile device from your pocket rather than being an entirely separate device.
An example would be how the Surface Book dGPU option has an extra GPU in the detachable keyboard. Attach the keyboard and you play some games you couldn't otherwise when detached. Sometimes you just use the power the mobile device itself carries; sometimes you increase its access to CPU/GPU cores as you have access to fixed resources such as work desks or home desks or cool hotel screens or what have you.
You'll have a camera & speakers or headset either integrated into your monitor, or plugged into it, just like almost every workplace computer does. So you just click the green "answer phone" button.