Razer's Project Linda is an elegant Android smartphone and laptop love-in

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TRYING TO SQUASH phones and laptops together is nothing new, but Razer has demonstrated an elegant way to do so with its 'Project Linda',

Revealed at CES 2018, the rather dully-named concept tech is a laptop-like dock that can be turned into a proper machine by slotting in a Razer phone into a cavity where one would normally find a trackpad.

Through the press of a button, a USB Type-C connection pops out of the dock and into a Razer phone, which provided the computer horsepower to push the pixels on the dock's 13.3in QHD display.

Once setup Project Linda looks remarkably like one of Razer's swish Blade laptops, only with the Razer phone's display acting as a trackpad instead of a traditional pad.

And it all looks rather good with the dock's keyboard sporting RGB backlighting, yet Project Linda also has a decent selection of ports: one USB A, one USB Type-C and 3.5mm headphone jack.

Project Linda doesn't have much in the way of traditional laptop guts other than 200GB of storage and a 53.6KWh battery, which also charges the Razer phone when it's docked.

There are no speakers in the dock itself, rather it relies on the punchy stereo speakers on the Razer phone, which seems like a good way to put the smartphone's hardware to use.

While Project Linda is currently only a concept, it looks to be pretty polished and there's a chance it could make it to the market unlike previous Razer concept tech.

The main barrier to this is it can only take a Razer phone, meaning that people really need to buy into Razer's vision. And developers will need to do so as well, given there's plenty of Android apps that refuse to play nicely in desktop mode, even with premium machines like Google's Pixelbook.

So as it stands Project Linda is simply a more elegant reimaging of what how a smartphone can be used to power a laptop; we just hope Razer can build upon it. µ