Here's an interesting concept entry included amongst those entered into the DesignBoom+Fujitsu Design Award competition. Instead of keeping our digital devices as separate elements, designer René Woo-Ram Lee envisions eliminating the hassle of cords and cables and giving our tablets and smartphones a place to live and use while at home in a unified laptop form. The Bento Book creates a solar powered docking station that is no longer just a passive charging station, but an all-in-one integrated system...

The visual analogy of a bento box has been tapped before in the realm of computing, but not to this degree (and not often successfully).

In many ways this concept design is a more idealized version of Motorola's Atrix smartphone and laptop dock design, a promising concept that sparked our interest at CES earlier this year, but in real world use has met with mixed reviews.

Here's another design which tries to tackle the issue of owning three discrete devices and integrating their utility into one form factor. The Piggyback Tablet by Brooks Benefiel predicts a world where most users ditch a laptop and run everything off a powerful smart phone. The larger monitor is simply a tablet sized display + docking station; the smart phone docks ontop and conveniently becomes the webcam up top.

Seems like an unlikely solution right now for us power users who want/need more memory, power and speed, but in due time there's no doubt mobile devices will offer the same performance and features in a hand-size portable form factor as components get smaller and more efficient.

[via Yanko Design]