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One device to rule them all... not
I realize it's been nearly 3 decades when "pocket PCs" were on my radar with Palm and iPaqs. I had this notion that perhaps I could do all my computing on a portable device that could fit in my pocket.
I guess the modern smartphone has advanced quite a bit, but it still doesn't handle all my computing needs.
Now, upon reflection, I've strayed far from the idea of having a singular computing device.
Currently I regularly use:
-Windows gaming laptop, specifically with a discrete GPU to handle video and 3D rendering work
-Macbook Air specifically just to deploy stuff via XCode
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I am in a similar boat in that I've moved on from the vision of an all in one pocket PC. I was very close at one point with my Huawei Mate 20X that supported a Dex like mode and had the apps I used for my work at the time. If they hadn't been banned by the US and it suddenly stopped getting updates I may have pursued that vision further.
But since I switched careers and now am a software engineer I really can't pursue that dream. And since I can't, and because of how dangerously addictive Social Media is I've had much better results than I probably would have expected by silo-ing my device uses.
I have a PC from work for development. I hate that I have to use Windows, but whatever.
Mac Mini for personal software development projects and other productivity things. I honestly rarely use it much.
iPad Pro for creativity. I use it for digital art and writing with Scrivener and a little reading. I have more apps, but most of them support research or references for writing and art respectively.
My Android phone is my communication device and only Social Media device, and it has very little social media on it. Android is way more capable than what I do with it, but I can't get a dumb phone because there are a few communication apps I just must have that I can't get on something like a Light Phone, such as Slack.
Because I silo my use so much it's nice that when I pick up my iPad Pro, for instance, I don't have that built in habit of opening a social media app. My brain says, "oh, we're being creative now, let's do that".
But also, I'm so angry with AI right now I kind of want to switch careers again and become a farmer or something. I hate AI so much it's hard to express all the ways I hate it and what it has helped to bring about in this world (not that we weren't already on a pretty dumb trajectory, but dang, it's accelerated that). And that makes me want to drop all my tech and go back to traditional art and writing on notebooks.