The next travel computer...

... Is a phone.

I've long been enamoured with small, highly portable computers, back to the days of a programmable Sharp calculator. My last couple of notebooks have been very thin and light, perfect for carrying around in a normal backpack. So far nothing has been able to beat the flexibility of a full PC.

The notebook serves as a tool for copying and uploading photos from the camera, for looking up information and checking into flights, for typing blogs and fixing up issues at work.

However, with these carry-on luggage only cheap flights ever gram and every centimetre counts. And phones are becoming even more capable. My Sony Z2 has the same number of screen pixels as my ultrabook. The same as my full HD television actually. A USB port, a micro SD reader and many other features.

Sure storage is an issue, to be solved either with bigger or more memory cards (back to the old days of travelling with digital cameras) or using online storage as the only backup. Google's Android operating system integrates well with their Google+ photo service, naturally enough.

Chrome also mostly mimics the abilities of the desktop version.

The problem is the keyboard. Typing thousands of words on the small screen is tough. I bought one tiny bluetooth keyboard from Japan, but it's just too small and requires function key presses to get numbers and popular characters. So now I'm trying the Rapoo E6500 mini bluetooth keyboard. That's what I'm typing this on. So far, so good!

Wouldn't mind a mini bluetooth mouse though. Sure I can find one.

The keys are not as nice as my notebooks, all of which I selected partly for their keyboards (the VAIO P being a case in point - magnificent keyboard for such a tiny computer). But good enough to type quite accurately and quickly.

I'm sure that I'll still be taking the ultrabook on many future trips, but I'll give this setup some further testing to see if it suffices for those situations where space is at an absolute premium.