As far as I understand, laptops were carried by officers. They could be regarded as responsible persons making who take data security in account and make sure that laptop does not contain data that do not belong there. If the rank and file is given such a powerful data storage as modern cell phone is, some of them might store unappropriate information in it.  There is no problem finding an encrypted file system for laptop, in fact modern operating system are supporting them out of the box, and even more sophisticated could be added. I have not heard of anything like that for cell phones, which might be due to a fact that I am much more into computers than cellphones.

 

DG

Many of the things mentioned in the article pertain mainly to applications that really have limited relationship with the functionality of a phone or radio per se; to communicate information.  A radio or phone interrelates with the application in so much as the device has the power and band width to support the desired applications.  I consider a phone, wirelelss or not, to depend on the presence of a fixed infrastructure to support its functionality whereas a set of pure radios may communicate between themselves independent of a infrastructure.   A phone often has to trade off power in order to achieve greater bandwidth to satisfy applications but therefor has to make the application less mobile in order to stay close to the supporting infrastructure (which itself can have limited mobility) but the phone can be much simpler ($) because of the services provided by the infrastructure to the phone.  Radios can have the power, band width, and network heaped on top of them at the cost of complexity and exspense but enable the user with operational flexability.  

Presently there are many hybrid solutions which have different sizes and shapes of network and transport layers heaped upon them in order to acquire different performance criteria.  In my opinion thou one size doesn't and can't fit all requirements.  There has to be, IMHO, a decision made about what overlapping requirements are needed where.