Anyway I could happily get a couple more years out of as a main PC, then it will probably have a few years in it as a hand-me-down or tv computer.
That said, I generally agree that, I mean, we’re going to get phones anyway so it is nice to get something useful out of them.
0: https://www.androidauthority.com/android-desktop-mode-leak-3550321/Does anyone use DeX?
I chose Motorola for the same reason (they have their own variant of dex which works smooth).
It’s what Stage Manager on iPads should have been: a regular, boring laptop mode to make multitasking on a large tablet screen usable without Apple unnecessarily trying to put their own unique spin on it.
Since I got my hands on a Daylight Computer, I have basically been doing the same thing but with a tablet Android environment instead of DeX. It's been nice, but I would love a nicer window manager when I have a keyboard and mouse connected.
What is this 1995?
AFAIK Google got rid of built-in support for this in Android Jelly Bean. Additional tricks are needed to make later versions of Android behave as a USB Mass Storage device. If it works for you out of the box, I suspect it may be specific to your Android distro.
I've swapped dozens of users from iOS to Android in the last year or so and nobody has had issues. Over the years I've helped hundreds of people migrate. Most everyone really likes the freedom to use different apps or workflows.
The only folks who ever have problems are people who need to be told how to use their devices. Choices confuse them so android is overwhelming, which is understandable. That's where iOS excels. iOS dictates how users can do things, which works for some people but also atrophies people's understanding of technology. People learn to do as they're told, not how to think about what's going on. Apple's walled garden makes people worse at technology.
Also sounds like you bought a garbage bargain android device. Idk how something can barely work as a camera/powerbank unless user error is present.
While this may be the case - many iPhone users love their phones (and iOS) for a different reason.
I've been with Android for some time: rooting, custom builds, different launchers, you name it. And it was fun back when I was in my early 20s, when had the time for this and when it was something new (HTC One, the very first model was my last Android phone).
Then I've bought iPhone 6 (I had switched from Arch to macOS few months earlier) and tried a few android phones since.
I simply don't need those "workflows".
I need about a dozen apps (the ones I use almost daily), I want them to be thought through (like Drafts) and I want my OS to work and behave the same way at least 5 years later (not to mention security updates and such).
This is where iPhone delivers and where Android quite often fails. I have iPhone 13 now and I can be sure that even few years from now everything will just work the same way does now.
And you have the bonus that with a Pixel you can remove big tech from the equation when needed with GrapheneOS.
That said, I would only recommend people to buy Pixel or Samsung A5x or up. They are the only Android phones that have reliable monthly updates [1], plus they are the only two brands that are not vague about having a truly separated secure enclave (Titan M2/Knox Vault respectively). Other vendors don't really talk about it and probably only use ARM TrustZone.
[1] Pixel is the only phone that gets them really on time, but with Samsung it's normally within a month on A5x and the flagships.
In 2025? I got my first Android phone, what, 15 years ago and I've never transferred files over USB because why would I.
They like to wait until stuff is “ready” to their standard. Android had 3G, 4G, and 5G first. OLED screens too.
Early folders had a lot of issues, but I know a lot of that has been sorted for years.
If it’s the size of my current phone and folds out to be twice as wide, that sounds kind of nice. Except it would be so thin I worry it would be flimsy and there wouldn’t be as much space for battery (which the open screen would use faster) so wouldn’t I get worse battery life?
Unless you make it twice as thick. Then it’s twice as thick.
And so I’m not sure that bigger screen would justify any of that for me. Now if it was three times as wide that might be significantly nice because now you’re approaching like iPad mini size. But that just makes the thinness/thickness problem worse.
If it’s say half the size of my current phone and then unfolds to be the size of my current phone (game boy SP style) I’m not sure that’s really buying me anything either. My phone is fine, I don’t need a twice as thick half as tall version in my pocket that’s not really gonna help me.
I have heard they’re popular with women which makes a certain amount of sense to me. Because if you’re going to just carry your phone in your bag then the fact that it’s twice as thick doesn’t matter that much but you get the bigger screen.
I’m a phone-in-pocket person.
So I don’t know, it’s just not making a lot of sense to me. But like I said I’ve never used one and it may be one of those things where after a couple of days the light would go on and I would totally get it. I questioned the Apple Watch at first and now I love it. But that’s not always how it goes.
It isn't. I went from Apple's 16 Pro to an Oppo Find N5. Battery size 16 Pro: 3,582mAh. Though in fairness the Oppo is the same size as an iPhone 16 Pro Max, which has 4,685mAh.
Battery size Oppo Find N5: 5600mAh 56% more than my old phone. 20% more than the 16 Pro Max. Silicon carbon batteries.
It's beautiful what can be done if we go with modern technology and not Apple's profit maximising regurgitation of the same same for many many years.
Apple in particular will get to deal with all the negative PR when people buy their $2000 iPhone Fold and online reports come flooding in for all of the week 1 display failures.
In addition Apple would be happy if people started upgrading their phones more frequently.
The phone just becomes the processing power; essentially an ARM laptop with all of the peripherals external.
I currently using Pixel 9 Pro XL (512GiB) and I imagine it's got more compute power than my ageing 2019 XPS 13.
Conversely, I'm not entirely sure what the use-case is. It couldn't replace my work-laptop with a 20-core CPU and 64GiB of RAM and ARC GPU, running Ubuntu/Gnome that I can also connect to a couple of monitors, keyboard, mouse, speakers, webcam, and more with a single cable via a docking station; and if I was going to carry the peripherals needed to do this with my phone, when on the go, I'd just carry a laptop, like I do now.
Curious to hear what the use-case is for people with these desktop/phone crossovers. If it's to cover the use-case where I haven't brought a laptop with me, forgotten it, didn't bring it for weight or whatever; where am I supposed to find these peripherals to use?
The problem is, the OS is very limiting. The file manager of iOS is extremely dumbed down, even Firefox doesn't work properly on it, and desktop mode with stage manager is just stupid. So yeah, it's not a success so far.
Android though feels more open, so I would give it a try of their desktop mode isn't stupid. Firefox on Android is fully functional at least and that's a great start!
source for planned integration: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/392521081?utm_source=...
I think Samsung recently added a "desktop Dex" mode that's supposed to be less mobile-ui. I haven't tried it tho.
It felt so close already back then, sluggish, but still usable. But that initial implementation was running some in-house version of Ubuntu with a custom kernel (if I remembered it correctly).
I just wish this becomes a reality much sooner then later. Especially if I can have my dev environment on some remote VPS with either tunneling, github code spaces or Azure DevBox
I feel this a lot. I use it daily, mostly as a thin client for remote desktop use but there are little niggles that would make it better. Examples:
- Let me control how the top bar and taskbar are viewed
- Let games capture the mouse in remote desktop (for fps type games)
- Fix the small issues that cause the mouse capture to fail on steam link occasionally
- Fix rendering issues with firefox while in desktop mode
- Let the youtube UI work in a more "desktop" way while in dex mode
These might be mostly app responsibilities, but if they could fix some of this stuff dex would be a dream instead of just being mostly useful.
Honestly I'd like to see Windows 11 running under this as well, but that seems incredibly unlikely.
https://9to5google.com/2018/11/09/samsung-linux-on-dex-andro...
It was the Ubuntu 16.04 desktop running in a LXD container. It crashed when the tablet went in out of memory, so I had to be careful with what I was running.
Security-wise: True; but Android is a gigantic yet well-oiled ecosystem at this point, from silicon designers to manufacturers to vendors to developers, running on handhelds to TVs to wearables to gaming devices (including AR/VR consoles).
> shame that Chrome OS was subsumed by Android
ChromeOS had a decade but Google is wise focus on just one desktop platform. I don't think it should surprise anybody that a platform with 3bn users & 2mn odd apps won out.
I wish there was a phone-laptop-dock solution that wasn't as expensive as an equivalent Chromebook. My phone is more than powerful enough to act as a travel laptop, yet its potential is constrained by a small touch screen..
https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/6/9464639/microsoft-windows...
I've only ever used Nexus/Pixel phones which haven't supported USB-C external monitors until just 1.5 years ago with the Pixel 8.
Sadly like many of their great features it was not well known....
The first modern thing like this that I can recall is the 2011 Android-based Motorola Atrix phone[1] that presented a DeX-like desktop (well before DeX!).
It used an Ubuntu-based desktop. It was really, really good, but never got traction.
I feel like this is something that could spur Windows/Windows Phone adoption in modern times.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...
But when you kill the non-PC platforms, you're just left with a reduced capability version of windows apps
The whole point of having USB C phones is to connect to desktop docks and get full featured computers. Instead we have muzzled devices.
I would love something that I can use and maybe even use an RDP on, to function as a full desktop computer.
But like all common sense improvements, some come just too late after the boat has sailed.
I can easily see the future of personal computing being a mobile device with peripherals that use its compute and cloud for anything serious. be that airpods, glasses, watches, or just hooking that device up to a larger screen.
theres not a great reason for an individual to own processing power in a desktop, laptop, phone, and glasses when most are idle while using the others.
I still will prefer the form factor of a laptop for anything serious though; screen, speakers, keyboard.
Yes you can get peripherals for a phone, yes I have tried that, no they're not good. Though perhaps with foldable screens this could change in the future.
I’ve always wondered if this kind of thing is actually that useful, but it’s not even an option for me because of the above.
Seems surprising Google didn’t act on this earlier. But maybe they didn’t want to cannibalize the Chromebooks?
I get the feeling very very few people know this exists at all on some Samsung phones. I’ve asked some tech-y people with Samsungs about it before and they didn’t even know it existed.
I think we've seen this before. Back before phones were "smart" there was one (Nokia, maybe?) that you could put on a little dock into which you could plug a keyboard and monitor.
Obviously, it didn't take off. Perhaps it was ahead of its time. Or, as you say, it wasn't done well at the time.
Phones accepting Bluetooth keyboard connections was very common back in my road warrior (digital nomad) days, but the screen was always the annoyance factor. Writing e-mails on my SonyEricsson on a boat on the South China Sea felt like "the future!"
Slightly related, I built most of my first startup with a Palm Pilot Ⅲ and an attached keyboard. Again, though, a larger screen would have been a game changer.
There have been multiple attempts at this over the years.
https://liliputing.com/5-laptop-docks-that-let-you-use-a-sma...
What may shift the balance is that slowly but surely USB-C docks are becoming more common, on their own terms, not related to cell phones. At some point we may pass a critical threshold where there's enough of them that selling a phone that can just natively use any USB-C dock you've got lying around becomes a sufficient distinguishing feature that people start looking for it. Even just treating it as a bonus would be a start.
I've got two docks in my house now; one a big powerful one to run the work-provided laptop in a more remote-work-friendly form factor, and fairly cheap one to turn my Steam deck into a halfway-decent Switch competitor (though "halfway-decent" and no more; it's definitely more finicky). We really ought to be getting to the point that a cell phone with a docked monitor, keyboard, & mouse for dorm room usage (replacing the desktop, TV, and if whoever pulls this off plays their cards right, the gaming console(s)) should start looking appealing to college students pretty soon here. The docks themselves are rapidly commoditizing if they aren't there already.
Once it becomes a feature that we increasingly start to just expect on our phones, then maybe the "notebook-like" case for a cell phone starts to look more appealing as an accessory. We've pretty much demonstrated it can't carry itself as its own product.
That would probably start the clock on the "notebook" as its own distinct product, though it would take years for them to finally be turned into nothing but shells for cell phones + a high-end, expensive performance-focused line that is itself more-or-less the replacement for desktops, which would themselves only be necessary for high-end graphics or places where you need tons and tons of storage and you don't want 10 USB-C drives flopping around separately.
Obviously the trend didn't take off
Still in the "smart" era, but the Motorola Atrix allowed that, but with its own laptop form factor dock.
https://www.cnet.com/culture/how-does-the-motorola-atrix-4g-...
An M4 Mac is way more powerful than an iPhone 16, but the iPhone is powerful enough to prove a much better experience on normal tasks compared to what that 2010 phone could at the time.
Basically I think everything has enough headroom that it’s not the compromise it would’ve been before. The biggest constraints on an iPhone’s performance are the battery and cooling. If you’re plugged in the battery doesn’t matter. And unless you’re not playing a fancy game cooling may not be an issue due to headroom.
Really, the compute on a phone has been good enough for at least a decade now once we got USB C. We're still largely doing on our phones and laptops the same things we were doing in 2005. I'm surprised it took this long
I'm happy this is becoming a real thing. I hope they'll also allow the phone's screen to be used like a trackpad. It wouldn't be ideal, but there's no reason the touchscreen can't be a fully featured input device.
I'm fully agreed with you on the wasted processing power-- I think we'll eventually head toward a model of having one computing device with a number of thin clients which are locally connected.
I might have misunderstood but do you mean as an input device attached to your desktop computer? Kdeconnect has made that available for quite some time out of the box. (Although it's been a long time since I used it and when I tested it just now apparently I've somehow managed to break the input processing half of the software on my desktop in the interim.)
Given that all the compute and all the data is on the cloud, there is little point in making ways for users to do clever interconnect things with their local devices.
I remember when everyone thought we were going to throw out our desktops and do all our work on phones and tablets! (Someone who kept insisting on this finally admitted that they couldn't do a spreadsheet on a phone or tablet.)
> Given that all the compute and all the data is on the cloud, there is little point in making ways for users to do clever interconnect things with their local devices.
IMO, it's a pain-in-the-ass to manage multiple devices, so IMO, it's much easier to just plug my phone into a clamshell and have all my apps show up there.
> This happens all the time where stories get flagged for no reason.
It's not for no reason—it just feels that way when you see flags on an article that you think is a good one for HN.
Judging from what else the same users have flagged, along with the responses you got in this thread, my guess is that they thought the submitted article (https://www.squaredtech.co/googles-desktop-view-android-phon...) wasn't good enough for HN. Indeed, it has the markings of blogspam (content lifted from other sources).
Normally we'd leave the flags alone on a post like this, but the comments in this thread are surprisingly good, so I've turned off the flags and replaced the URL with an earlier article which has the same material and which in fact, it (almost?) looks like the other article was cribbed from.
I was asking if there is not an inverse function, which would be a higher karma unflag operation, on the assumption people who flag up are being somewhat incautious and a smaller set of people could say "no, this is worth seeing"
I have no problem with flagging per se, or with my own ability to see flagged content.
Samsung has abandoned DeX, attempting to use it (if using Windows 11) the user is instructed to use Phone Link which is not nearly as good, imho.
What I’d really like is a personal computer I can plug into a screen to work, then carry with me when I’m done. That would be a real step forward in personal computing. It would make laptops unnecessary.
https://www.androidpolice.com/android-15-linux-terminal-app/
As linked somewhere else in the thread, Google wants to extend it to run (non-Android) Linux desktop apps besides Android apps. So once this is refined, plugging in an Android phone will give you a general-purpose desktop.
Exciting times!
Devices with hardware keyboards were easier to use for creation (especially writing) and more of the software was focused on creation because of the more limited media processing capabilities of those devices (e.g. less processing power, less memory, more restricted media codecs at that time).
This is true for almost all computers. That doesn't mean you can't use a computer built for consumption for creation.
Something like a Steam Deck or RoG Ally could also fit the bill. Gaming handhelds seem to be turning into "phones but if they didn't suck" (i.e. didn't run Android/iOS).
I wonder if we'll see USB-C docks for phones with fans blowing at the device for improved thermals.
If they nail the Linux container UX as well as ChromeOS it would motivate me to buy a top-tier device rather than my sluggish Fairphone 4, right now I don't see the usecase other than good camera.
Imagine thst a large userbase could just skip the laptop and desktop in favor of a USB-C dock and a decent display :)
https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/samsung-dex-first-impre...
Are they though? Phones already have a broad range of uses. I've seen people try to make laptops out of them and it just doesn't make sense for a number of reasons:
- As screen size goes up so do battery requirements, so you're already paying for a screen, a chassis, and a physical keyboard. Why not go the whole way and pay for the silicon?
- When your phone is being a PC it's no longer being a phone; you can't do phone calls and camera photos (at least not well) while it's a PC.
I have a Samsung and use Dex occasionally, but the uses are limited. In my case it's to check personal emails, which is not allowed on the corporate network. But outside of cases like this I can't imagine ever preferring Dex to a laptop or a dedicated computer. It's much better at being a phone.
I'm a developer so I have my needs which are unlikely to be "completely fulfilled" by a Phone-as-computer either.
However "as screen size goes up so does battery requirements", my thought was to keep the device docked in a Dex dock with PD and a fan for cooling, and since the resolution on modern phones is so damn crazy, as long as the device screen isn't pumping pixels when connected it should be fine to do 2k.
While it's a PC it's docked so you can't take calls on the phone easily (unless you have a long cable) but you could with a headset. Now I am not talking about the Dex implementation, I'm in the "what can be" discussion for the future.
For "normal people" a good Android desktop would be a lot better than not having a "desktop setup" at all. They don't have to buy a new device but can still get a mouse/keyboard/display combo and so some "productivity tasks".
I tried Dex out on a S10 or something but it wasn't enough for me other than as a cool gimmick, but I definitely see a usecase that could become widespread.
Just one example article, using a chroot environment:
https://www.nextpit.com/turn-your-android-device-into-a-linu...
But Ubuntu touch, and other native linux phone installs have touted desktop mode over the years.
The h/w 10 years ago was marginal at performing this task, and the non-corporate OSes were, and are, actively suppressed by goggle and the rest of the corporate "phone" development industry. This is an almost identical scenario as M$ dominating the PC manufacturing business, even though they didn't make the h/w.
But this serves as another typical example of how long ago this type of feature could have been available if every new innovation didn't have to be vetted from the perspective of vendor benefit, instead of advancing on the basis of user benefit.
Indeed, the primary "core thing" missing is being manufactured and dictated to "the market" by a multi-billion $ monopoly...
I run my S23 Ultra with a pair of XReal One's, and a folding Bluetooth keyboard (DeX let's you use your phone as a touchpad). It is really amazing in widescreen mode sitting in a coffee shop, reading through technical documents and answering work email. When I'm done, it can all fold up and fit in a (spacious) pair of cargo shorts.
I think Samsung has played the long game on DeX, with an eye towards their collaborative XR glasses with Google next year. As great as XReal has been, I am eager to see a "first-party" solution.
Are the Xreal One's that much of a step forward that you can use it for serious work? Even on my Quest Pro I find it just on the edge of being too annoying to do coding-work. Web browsing is decent.
And second question, worth buying the One or waiting for the One Pros?
It's not perfect but usable.
Why don't we have virtual offices to wander around yet?
What's strange is that vanilla OS does show a taskbar (tablet mode) if you increase DPI to 600+. Theoretically you can get a taskbar now only if tablet mode taskbar could show up in secondary virtual displays.
https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy/blob/master/doc/virtual...
The only thing that wouldn't work was a ruby CSS library that had a (if processor='arm') {crash()}.
What a pleasure to have a computer in your pocket.
refulgentis•9h ago
bobajeff•9h ago
Miraste•9h ago
odo1242•9h ago
nashashmi•9h ago
I can’t imagine android going faster than chrome at a native level either.
Miraste•7h ago
refulgentis•4h ago
mdhb•9h ago
There is heavy work underway in fuchsia currently to provide Linux kernel comparability via a subsystem they call starnix.
They are already I believe looking at running a version of fuchsia in a vm on Android.
Then there was also a lot of talk about the androidification of ChromeOS.
It sure looks like we are moving towards some kind of cross device OS that is distinctly Google’s without Linux in the future.
nashashmi•9h ago
mdhb•9h ago
refulgentis•5h ago
Long story short is you can imagine in 2019 there was X amount of engineers, 95% on Android and 5% on what you'd call Fuchsia.
The central argument up top became about why the renegade band that split off from Android/Chrome etc. to do Fuchsia in...early to mid 2010s?...and if it was going to provide a significant step forward. This became framed in terms of "$ of devices shipped", in which case, there was no contest.
Funnily enough this very article is about N dominos down from there (de-investment in Fuchsia, defenestration of head software guy of Android/Chrome/Chrome OS etc., ex. Moto hardware guy is in charge now)
Don't read this comment too closely, I was not in the room. For example, I have absolutely no actual quotes, or relayed quotes, to 100% confirm some set of individuals became focused on # of devices shipped.
Just obsessive enough to track wtf was going on, and on big enough projects, and trustworthy and hard working, and clearly without party or clique, such that I could get good info when asked, as it was clear my only concern was making things that were good and making sure all of Google's products could be part of that story.
mdhb•4h ago
One part I find hard to reconcile with all of that is that even just looking at public facing stuff alone it seems to be under VERY active development.
I count 100 commits in just the past 24 hrs here: https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+log and it’s been at that pace for a LONG time.
Which leads me to ask… what is up with it in your opinion because that’s hard to match up with DOA
Also I wasn’t making up the idea that they were in the process of bringing in this “microfuchsia” VM into Android although it’s purpose is unclear.