I think the problem can be solved by separating the "phone" experience from the "mobile" experience.
Phones are these devices powered by a philosophy (and to an extent, a technology) from 3-4 decades ago and day after day we see them ruining the experience of having the internet access from your hands. We need to move from a mobile-phone era to a mobile-internet era.
In what way do you think the phone legacy is holding us back? What concrete steps would you suggest?
It seems to me this has already happened. We only call these things phones for legacy reasons, but the iPhone broke the design link with actual phones and turned the phone aspect into just another communications app.
OK, but how does that hold any other aspects of these devices back? Remove the baseband processor and you've got an iPod Touch, or a small iPad. It doesn't fundamentally change the device or really open up any new avenues not possible with a baseband processor.
