They are better music players. They are better GPS nav systems.
They're not better music players. Sound quality can be identical because phones support USB DACs, but again, everything else is worse. On a real computer I can easily search my library just by typing. There's no way to find specific tracks that fast on mobile.
Same reason I listed them as the best music players - I don't want to carry around a laptop to hear tunes. And while some audiphiles claim that they can hear a difference, I have never seen evidence that this is the case.
Fortunately, good DACs are cheap now, e.g. the Apple USB to 3.5mm adapter [1].
[0] https://headphonesaddict.com/harman-curve/
[1] https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/r...
For playing music when I'm at work, etc., my phone sounds MUCH better than my laptop that's sitting at home.
Also, even if we really did compare apples to apples, I'm not sure how the sound hardware on a laptop is going to be any better than that on a phone.
Turns out different form factors are better at different things.
Android even supports access to raw pseudorange data from the GNSS chipset now. Today's phones support all the constellations and new technology like GPS L5. There's even a way to turn off things like duty cycling to maximize accuracy at the expense of battery consumption. Should be possible to set up centimeter precision relative positioning with these things.
