Why can't second life play on a ipad or mobilephone?

[Rolig Loon]

The Lumiya viewer is designed to work on an Android mobile device.  It has limited, low-quality graphics, but that's about all you can expect from a tablet.  One equivalent for an iPad or iPhone is Pocket Metaverse, which it a text-only viewer.  You can get in world to communicated and handle your inventory, but you are blind --- no graphics.  There are a few other text-only viewers liste at http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Third_Party_Viewer_Directory

[Rolig Loon]

The Lumiya viewer is designed to work on an Android mobile device.  It has limited, low-quality graphics, but that's about all you can expect from a tablet.  One equivalent for an iPad or iPhone is Pocket Metaverse, which it a text-only viewer.  You can get in world to communicated and handle your inventory, but you are blind --- no graphics.  There are a few other text-only viewers liste at http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Third_Party_Viewer_Directory

[Peggy Paperdoll]

The simple answer to your question is SL is a rather advanced (though still experimental) program designed around real time, interactive, 3D graphics.  There's not a phone or tablet on the market that can run such a program......my guess is it will be a while before the hand held mobil gadgets get to the point in technology to be able to run a program like SL.  Then there's that "moving target" thing.  SL advances at their pace (which it geared toward full on computers) as the phones and tablets advance at their pace..........eventually the hand helds will catch up but don't look for that to happen before about 5 years (maybe).

The statements about when or if are entirely my opinion.  Based on how things tend to work in the tech stuff.

[KarenMichelle Lane]

Basically,

If the phone 4G connection could send/receive the needed world information and the GPU had to crunch the graphics of SL your phone would melt or explode in a bright colorful bloom of light.

P.S. It's not the Graphics per se, it's the rendering that makes of breaks a great SL Session experience. Games [sl is NOT a game] upload the "world & avatar information" once to a PC. SL sends "updates" that allow your world to be recreated over and over again from your perspective in it and that of those around you.