I, For One, Welcome Our RoboHon Overlord

Japan Is A Confusing Country

Meet RoboHon, soon to hit store shelves in Japan, and a gadget that's going to save the world for marketing and advertising professionals.

No, really.

You see, this cute little 7-inch robot does all the things your smartphone does -- with WiFi and LTE and a tiny little screen on his back -- but also with cameras for eyes, facial and voice recognition software and -- the game changer! -- a projector.

So the fact that it can walk, talk, sit down and dance is all kinds of adorable. It's also pretty great that a phone doesn't have to look like a phone, because, well, that just seems inevitable, really, especially in a society where customizing items to your taste seems like a Constitutional right. And while I, personally, can't imagine ever being anything but socially mortified to use him (her? Seems more like a him to me) as my always-on-me digital device, I do love this: having the ability to project mobile display, because in that single and glorious moment, I am no longer wedded to a mobile Web experience that is so frustratingly small.

Imagine, if you will, your smartphone being able to give you the same screen as your desktop monitor, whenever you wanted it, by just pushing out to a screen or wall. At some point, the wall would be replaced by holograms. And hey presto, I've gotten away from responsive design, sites that are borderline unreadable without ad blockers, and maybe more, really. I've also probably, once we've got full interconnectivity with the Internet of Things, phones that can just broadcast to any available screen with a takeover.

We are, of course, years away from all of that. But the first step is likely to seem as left field as a phone that doesn't conform to any of the usual rules of phone.

And if you can make anything, really, into a phone?

Well, I can think of plenty of other objects that could be made more intriguing with a phone, and with projection hardware hard-wired...

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