Qualcomm and the Emergence of the Blended PC-Smartphone Last week, Qualcomm made what might seem to be an obscure announcement for their XR1 Smart View Reference Design — one that marks the potential obsolescence of every PC and smartphone in the market. Yes, we are talking about the onset of a hardware revolution that could slam PCs and smartphones together into a single class of computer. That computer would be wearable, and if connected to a cloud service like the Windows Virtual Desktop, it would be revolutionary. Let’s explore this possible revolutionary new PC this week. Head-Mounted Displays Qualcomm announced a significant improvement to mixed reality headsets that would initially be wired but eventually be wireless. The result, however, would be a very high-resolution, head-mounted display that could replace the one on your phone or PC. Smartphones, tablets, and laptop PCs sizes are defined by their displays. You can build tiny keyboards, but anything under 12in. in a PC, 8in. in a tablet, or 5in. in a smartphone is just too small to use today.