Can a smartphone completely replace the PC?

If you think investing 30 days to immerse myself in a new technology is impressive, then this might blow your mind. One man gave up his PC, and other devices, and used just a smartphone for all of his work and communications for an entire year. As in, 365 days. Like, twelve consecutive 30 Days series.

To be clear, he used a Samsung Galaxy Note, which is really a “phablet”–part smartphone / part tablet. It is a pretty popular device, especially for people who want both a smartphone and a tablet, but don’t have the budget to afford both devices. But, it’s really too comically and grotesquely large to be considered just a smartphone.

That said, I’m not taking anything away from this man’s experience. He gave up his PC cold turkey. That means that aside from the standard sort of things one does on a smartphone like checking email, taking phone calls, posting a Facebook status update, or checking in on Foursquare, he also used it for actually creating new documents and spreadsheets, accessing and managing files, creating and editing video content, writing blog posts, and more.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the whole thing is that now that his year-long experiment is technically over he’s not actually in any hurry to go back to the old way of doing things. After relying solely on his “phablet” device for the past year, he has learned a new way of doing things, and formed new habits that he doesn’t want to give up.

I’ve made the assertion on numerous occasions that a tablet is a “personal computer” and that it can replace a traditional PC for most users in most scenarios. This takes it to the next level, though, by simultaneously eliminating both the PC and smartphone, and moving to one phablet device to do it all.