How many WiMo devices does it take to display an image?

When you think of you average Windows Mobile device what would you conceder to be the areas which require development and could be improved? Maybe the battery life or the performance…

Not quite what Microsoft was thinking when they filed a patent application called “Mobile Device Collaboration”. In essence mobile device collaboration will enable Windows Mobile devices to share pixels with each other. One of the problems with mobile devices is the size of their screens, make them too big and you need a trolley to kart your “mobile” device around, make them too small and you end up squinting or using a magnifying glass to see your images.

One solution is to carry a pico projector around with you so you can project anything on your device on the wall and blow it up to 50 inches, but Microsoft think they have another option for you. All you need is more WiMo devices!

As I said using Mobile Device Collaboration the devices can share pixels, so put them in a line and using proximity sensors they will work out their orientation and display the one image across all their screens.

I find it hard to see the real world benefit of this, very nice in principle but who is going to carry 10 windows mobile devices around in their giant pocket just so they can get a bigger screen? In a world where device boundaries are blurring so you end up with one device that does everything, except make the coffee, Microsoft are proposing a solution which means one device is enough.

Slightly more useful but still dubious, Microsoft also want CPUs to combine to handle intensive tasks, phones to combine antennas to boost signal strength and via tethering you could even link batteries so if one device is dying the others can keep it alive.

I don’t think we will be seeing this in mobile devices on the market any time soon.