Taking better advantage of a display is nice but imo the really exciting part of desktop mode is the planned integration with Google's Linux Terminal app (i.e. 1st party linux VM support). I have a Samsung DeX device and while you can get a basic dev environment working easily it can be really cumbersome to make it comfortable to use and integrate with your normal tablet workflow. Being able to install full-fat linux apps and run them in a window would be a complete game changer.
Chrome OS allowed this even before 2020. So you could open Linux (even GUI) and android app right next to each other... Had whole JS dev workflow/toolchain running on that ( did not want to clog my main computer with that ). Problem with mixing apps is that for some you have to use mouse/ stylus because their GUI was not meant to be touched.
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.
Using android on a laptop with a keyboard and mousepad was always an awkward experience. It's kind of like trying to use an iPad as your main computing device. Similarly bad experience.
Similar with a keyboard and mouse with Android TV - I thought it would be useful for YouTube searches etc, the UI is so ill adapted to keyboard I gave up.
It's always funny charging my phone off the USB C for my monitor, nudging my mouse and seeing a pointer appear on the screen though.
I just wish it would do 4K resolution out of the box.
The hardware can do it, it's just that the system settings won't show you the 4K resolution option for some reason. But you can do some hacks to make it appear and then it works just fine.
You need to install a nondescript app called 'Samsung Good Lock' from the Samsung store (not available in Play store), and use that to side-load an app called 'Multistar', which is an app to tweak display settings. From that side-loaded app you need to tap the 'I Samsung DeX' which does various setting changes to "Make Dex even more friendly", it doesn't specify what it does exactly, but it'll make the 4K resolution option appear in the system settings.
This all feels real sketchy and I don't understand why Samsung doesn't just enable 4K resolution officially, because the hardware is clearly capable of it.
With every OneUI update there are rumors that it'll natively support 4K, but so far that hasn't happened AFAIK. Admittedly I haven't used Dex in a while for myself, but judging from recent Reddit posts this hack is still needed.
According to the Samsung Store it is developed by developer 'Good Lock Labs'. According to this Wikipedia source [0] they developed this app 'in cooperation with Samsung'. Browsing through the sources I did find a 2016 article from Samsung themselves [1] about Good Lock, indeed confirming it is theirs.
Also, it looks like Good Lock is now also available on the Google Play Store, and there it lists Samsung Electronics as the developer [2].
I guess this does make it less sketchy of an app to use, but it still feel wrong to have to do so many weird steps to get a menu option working.
Aye, to some degree they are, but I'm also glad that android is open/hackable enough that goodlock lets you add these additional preferences. (I also use it, for me it was for ultrawide resolutions)
I remember when they presented the S10, with the initial implementation of Dex.
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
Reasonably fluid, but not when it comes to heavy web pages with a lot of 3D. I have an S24U I use in DeX for most of my day but when I do have to switch to my ten inch 6800u laptop it absolutely demolishes the DeX experience. There's still a fractional second of lag that Samsung hasn't done away with yet.
This is the right answer. DeX itself was introduced with the S8 series.
With the S9 they introduced the developer test version of Linux on DeX but it never came to the S8 or S10 and it was already discontinued with the Android 10 update :(
It's not a full laptop replacement, but at least for me it's good enough at what it does that I can just take my phone or tablet with me on short vacations and not be paranoid that I'm gonna have to do something complicated like log into my bank or write some verbose emails that I'm normally afraid to do from my phone. In those instances, plugging one of them into a KVM and Dex mode is sufficient to get over the hump.
Last I used it, I still wouldn't want to write code on Dex. But it was great for everything else. I could definitely complete just about any other tasks I needed with it. It was a little clunky, but doable; teams calls, getting into internal tools for triaging systems issues, the company CRM, all that stuff.
Rumor is Samsung won't support Google's Linux Terminal (at least for their existing phones) since their Knox conflicts with the Android Virtualization Framework :-(.
Honestly I'd like to see Windows 11 running under this as well, but that seems incredibly unlikely.
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.
When I tried the external display mode on my Pixel 8a, I did some development with a bluetooth keyboard, bluetooth trackball and vscode tunneling into my desktop.
So the development wasn't local, but it was sort-of usable. (And the editing is local in any case.)
I had no idea the vscode tunneling stuff worked in the browser. I thought it was SSH. Do they have some sort of WebSocket proxy? Do you have a link to how to set this up?
They offer both ssh and their own tunnel protocol.
So you start the 'server' on eg your desktop, and that registers with eg GitHub or Microsoft (or perhaps another service, not sure how open the system is), and then you can use any other computer to connect to your system via GitHub or Microsoft (as a proxy, I think). The other computer can either run just a browser, or can run a vscode (which is basically also a browser in the end).
Yes, the nice thing about the tunnels is that the computer you want to develop on doesn't have to be reachable from the internet. It only has to be able to reach the internet. GitHub (or Microsoft) play the man-in-the-middle.
It's really convenient. I often use it to develop from my laptop on my desktop, even when they are on the same local network: because it's basically just as fast, but I don't have to worry about which network I'm on, it just always works (as long as I have Internet access on both machines. But if that ever stops, I'm not really going to develop much anyway.)
I don't know. Google is always building lots of stuff and most of it gets shelved before it ever sees the light of day, and 75% of what does get released gets shuttered within 5 years.
The reality is if it isn't ads or ads adjacent, Google will lose interest. And based on their historical revenue I suppose they ought to continue with this model.
Google needs a widely used platform for AI integration into every computing task, based on interactions with and data on that device. Their best bet is to expand the reach of Android into traditional desktop tasks.
Android already made lots of progress on multi screens and adaptive layouts, and there is now a new developer center with guides for what they call productivity apps.
Not to mention, more people than we realize are on their phones. For those of us who use both a phone and computer, it is VERY easy to overlook.
For example, my wife, she is primarily on her phone as a computing device. Only recently after buying a Mac Mini and a Cricut is she back to using a standard computer. She might borrow my laptop for online shopping just so she can open 50 windows and 80 tabs to consume all available memory on my Macbook Air, but that's probably because Safari on iOS has sane tab caps.
I also know that games predominantly for PC / Web have become predominantly mobile over the years. There's a reason Roblox plays on your phone and tablet. You might not have the specs for a gaming machine, but your iPhone / iPad / Android definitely do.
I feel you on what you're saying, but Google's Chromebook business is _big_ (11.5 Billion in revenue 2024) and this seems like a way to pull together that with their Android development.
How is it a win for Google to release something open-source that had potentially cost them lots of money? Even if they don't need and pursue it anymore, why would they just give it to the competition?
It's always easily said to "just open-source" it but Google is a business and owes outside software developers nothing.
How can another company compete with a product Google no longer offers? There is no competition because Google quit competing.
If Google spins up a project and then abandons it, how could they possibly be harmed by someone else offering a comparable product? Google has already accepted a total loss on the product, there's really nothing for them to lose here.
> What benefit do they see in exchange for the effort in open sourcing things?
Goodwill and more people willing to try whatever they release next, rather than the current situation of “Oh, Google is releasing a new thing? Pass. They’ll just stop supporting it and I’ll be left in the cold anyway, so no bother even trying”.
Killing so many projects makes fewer people interested in trying whatever they release next, which means fewer users, which means a higher likelihood it’ll be abandoned. It’s a vicious cycle that could be stopped or even reversed if they open-sourced their abandoned stuff.
To be clear, I’m not necessarily advocating Google should do it or that it’s be a clear win with no downsides. Maybe the upside wouldn’t be worth it, but there is an upside.
My point has nothing to do with licensing, but longevity.
What non-technical users know is “Google released a project, I invested my time in it, they abandoned it, and I was left hanging. This has happened multiple times so I no longer want to try anything new they release”.
Had the projects been open-sourced, at least some of them would have been picked up by others and continued so non-technical users would know “Google released a project, I invested my time in it, they abandoned it, then someone continued it and I’m still using it to this day. I’m happy to try this new Google thing, because even if they abandon it I won’t be left in the cold”.
It's a win, because people will not fear Google shuttering their experiments, and thus will be more likely to use them. It's also a win, in that it furthers a common good: if Google abandons a venture, why would they be upset if someone picks it up and succeeds? It's also a win, in that it boosts the open-source community (or industry, whatever you want to call it), which is also a win-win. If you want to by cynical, it would also be a win in that you could spin a narrative about how Google's monopoly-fueled profits trickle-down via open-source projects and thus unregulated capitalism works.
If you haven't tried it, especially if your workplace allows your phone to have access to some corporate data, DeX + a good pair of AR or just integrated display glasses feels like the future.
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.
I tried it for a while with the best AR glasses I could find at the time, XReal Air 2 Pros with an Xreal Beam, and although I could see the potential, it wasn't good enough to get work done. The screen size was too small, the resolution too poor, and it was a little too jittery and unnatural feeling.
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?
Xreal One removed the biggest problems with that tech, it's usable now. No more "jittery and unnatural feeling" or stupid dongles/pucks. They put custom silicon in the glasses which stabilizes things and optionally locks displays in space.
I'd say take another look. The beam has a LOT of issues. The One basically says "give me a signal, I'll project it in 2D and track it with 3DoF." Its smooth, and while it can drift a little (it is only an accelerometer), it is stable for me.
I wear glasses with mine, yet I still find it surprisingly crisp for text in ultra-wide mode. I'd say it is a fairly unobtrusive experience. It also helps that the nose pads don't dig into my skin.
That said, if a Quest Pro isn't good enough, I hesitate to recommend it. The FOV is certainly smaller on the One.
Thanks. If you have experience with the Quest Pro would you say the text clarity is a step up with the Ones? Supposedly the One Pros will be even better, and are coming out soon.
This is the problem. VR/AR can add value but you really have to tailor the experience to it. And it has to be a suitable usecase.
If you just lift over what you have in 2D it becomes only more painful. But this is what most people do. Also many platforms, like Microsoft Mesh. Yes, it's cool that you can join a teams meeting in VR. But until they add something that actually takes advantage of being in VR, all it does is add more friction. Roasting marshmallows and other cutesy minigames does not add any value whatsoever.
I think there’s maybe a case for VR meeting rooms that you kinda teleport into, but anything beyond that is gonna be niche as hell and just a hindrance in every other case. A whole VR office space? Just gets in the way.
And I expect even a VR meeting space would see more use that’s worse than a normal video call but is happening because someone in charge is over the moon for it, than it’d see use in the far rarer cases where it’s really better.
Well, I've done extensive trialling at work during the pandemic (when flying often just wasn't an option at all!) and I do see added value for things like workshops.
Teams has breakout rooms but they are very rigid. You have to switch to one and define them. You can't 'glance over' and see what the other rooms are doing. It's much more flexible to just walk around in a 3D space, work on a shared whiteboard you are standing around, pull in some powerpoints to discuss, and walk over to another group if you're needed (you could see them wave over). At this point it really becomes a real alternative to flying over for a workshop. Thus saving many tonnes of CO2, and much cost in flights and hotels. VR is not quite as good but it's much better at dynamic workshops than a simple video tool like Teams is. Added bonus if you are discussing potential upcoming products that you already have 3D models of. Just picking up a model and going like "Hey why don't we put the USB port on this side", this is really where this shines.
But the tool has to be really good. Other solutions like Arthur, Viverse and Spatial could do it really well (Spatial has since gone full consumer-oriented though and has lost many capabilities for business, it's now more of a luxury VRChat). Mesh can not, it is extremely limited. It's the old AltSpaceVR but dumbed down. It would have been better if they kept AltSpace as it was without messing so much with it.
Speed of light limitations there is fundamental latency that will be noticed if you are not close enough. Many musicians are doing virtual jam sessions and 1000km is about the limit. Music is the most demanding application, depending on how your meeting is run some can handle a lot of meetings. Someone on Mars will forever be limited to just watching a presentation, someone on a different continent will need to raise their hand and be recognized before asking a question.
That was what SimulaVR was advertising on. Unfortunately it seems things are a lot more difficult than they anticipated and they still have not shipped any devices.
Same with the Immersed Visor. Also still vaporware. They had lots of journalists fly over for a demo that didn't actually work and all they did was show off hardware.
I actually don't have any sort of Dex/AR setup. Currently only have my phone's screen. Admittedly I've only tested it. Haven't actually done a coding session yet. So total typing time on that keyboard is minimal. So I guess all I can say is I'm happy with the build quality and design. The bluetooth switching between devices is pretty slick.
Any usb-c docking station should work. (should being key, many are lacking something useful - commonly the monitor port is a usb-A video interface with windows-only drivers not a display port that would just work).
Though I suspect a laptop is still what you want. Your phone will generate too much heat to leave in your pocket. Or maybe some backpack (fanny pack?) wearable?
The issue with this is usually that you can't have power from the powerbank going into the only USB-C socket on the phone while the display signal comes out on the same cable. I think it's technically doable, but not usually with dongles that would fit in your pocket.
I recently bought a second-hand Microsoft Surface tablet, installed Debian and now run GNOME on it. The first time it came up and I logged into a familiar GNOME environment was a profound experience. I was pretty sure what was going to happen, but it still took me by surprise.
So I don't think the convergence idea is necessarily bad. It's perhaps somewhat niche, and it's not easy to pull off.
I almost never use a phone, so for me the major selling point of my tablet is no Android oddities or second-rate citizen vibes. I don't need to wade through an app store to do simple things. I'm not depending on a hardware vendor where support stops a few years down the road. Plugin a keyboard and mouse, and it's just like any other computer with a really small screen. I already have a desktop computer, so it doesn't replace anything, but the familiarity is still nice.
The touch experience is not as polished as Android. It's fine for my purposes, though. I'm mostly using the tablet as a night-time reader for epubs - dark background, light level at minimum, and then it works surprisingly well for when I wake up and need something to do before I can fall asleep again.
this done well is a transformational thing, its just no one has been willing to invest yet, but the compute on a phone is now good enough to do most things most users do on desktop.
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.
The future of personal computing is being dictated by the economics of it, which are that the optimal route to extract value from consumers is to have walled-garden software systems gated by per-month subscription access and/or massive forced advertising. This leads to everything being in the cloud and only fairly thin clients running on user hardware. That gives the most control to the system owners and the least control to the user.
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've heard so many "The future of personal computing" statements that haven't come true, so I don't take much stock in them.
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.
> 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.)
We're almost there. The cool kids are already using 12" touchscreen ARM devices that people from 10 or 20 years ago would probably think of as tablets. Some kinds of work benefit greatly from a keyboard, but that doesn't necessarily mean you want oneall the time - I still think the future is either 360-fold laptops with a good tablet mode (indeed that's the present for me, my main machine is a HP Envy) or something like the MS Surface line with their detachable "keyboard cover".
> Some kinds of work benefit greatly from a keyboard, but that doesn't necessarily mean you want oneall the time
I would say most kinds of work.
Even if you're just on teams discussions - a real keyboard is much more productive than messing around on a touchscreen. Same with just reading. Sometimes I read a forum thread on my phone and then when I get back to the real computer I'm surprised how little I read and how much it felt like.
The only thing where I don't see this being the case is creative work like drawing where a tablet is really perfect, much better than a wacom or something.
Well, the MacBook Air is pretty much an iPad that swapped its touchscreen for a keyboard (and trackpad).
> I still think the future is either 360-fold laptops with a good tablet mode (indeed that's the present for me, my main machine is a HP Envy) or something like the MS Surface line with their detachable "keyboard cover".
I think people still want to use different form factors in the future. There's different uses for a phone, a tablet, a laptop and a desktop.
I do agree that laptops might get better tablet modes, but if you want to have a full-sized comfortable-ish keyboard, the laptop is gonna be more unwieldy than a dedicated tablet.
The only thing you save from running your desktop (or even laptop) form factor off your phone is the processor (CPU, GPU, RAM). You still have to pay for everything else. But even today the cost of desktop processing components that can reach phone-like performance is almost a rounding error; just because they have so much more space, cooling and power to play with.
(Destop CPUs can be quite pricey if you buy higher end ones, but they'll outclass phones by comical amounts. Phone performance is really, really cheap in a desktop.)
> I think people still want to use different form factors in the future. There's different uses for a phone, a tablet, a laptop and a desktop.
> The only thing you save from running your desktop (or even laptop) form factor off your phone is the processor (CPU, GPU, RAM). You still have to pay for everything else.
Having used the same device as my tablet/laptop/desktop for a few years (previously a couple of generations of Surface Book, now the Envy, in both cases with a dock set up on my desk), I never want to go back. It just makes using it so much smoother, even compared to having tab sync and what have you between multiple devices. It's not a money thing, it's a convenience thing, which is why I think it'll win out in the end.
I think as hardware continues to get thinner and lighter, the advantage of a tablet-only device compared to a tablet/laptop will disappear, and as touchscreens get cheaper, there'll be little point in laptop-only devices. I definitely still want an easy way to take a keyboard with my device on the train/plane, and I don't know what exact hardware arrangement will win out for that, but I'm confident that the convergence will happen. I think phone convergence will also happen eventually, for the same reason, but how that will actually work in terms of the physical form factor is anyone's guess.
> Having used the same device as my tablet/laptop/desktop for a few years (previously a couple of generations of Surface Book, now the Envy, in both cases with a dock set up on my desk), I never want to go back. It just makes using it so much smoother, even compared to having tab sync and what have you between multiple devices. It's not a money thing, it's a convenience thing, which is why I think it'll win out in the end.
Yes, that's useful. But eg ChromeOS already gives you most of that, and a bit of software could get you all the way there.
> I think as hardware continues to get thinner and lighter, the advantage of a tablet-only device compared to a tablet/laptop will disappear, and as touchscreens get cheaper, there'll be little point in laptop-only devices.
I agree with the latter, but not the former. There are mechanical limits to shrinking a keyboard, and still preserve comfort.
(And once you have the extra space from a keyboard, you might as well fill it up with more battery. But I'm not so sure about that compared to the argument about physical lower bounds on keyboard size.)
> eg ChromeOS already gives you most of that, and a bit of software could get you all the way there.
I don't understand what you mean here. If you're talking about some kind of easy sync between devices software, people have been trying to make that work for decades, but they not haven't succeeded but haven't even really made any progress.
> There are mechanical limits to shrinking a keyboard, and still preserve comfort.
Maybe, but those limits are plenty big enough for a tablet - particularly with the size of phones these days, a tablet smaller than say 10" is pointless, and the keyboards on 11" laptops are fine. Now making a device that can work as both a phone and a laptop-with-keyboard will probably require some mechanical innovation, yes, but that's the sort of thing that I suspect will be figured out sooner or later, e.g. we're already seeing various types of folding phones going through the development process.
11" laptops are not fine to type on all day unless you give them huge bezels (even the 11" macbook which did have those huge bezels was space-constrained on the less important keys). Ergonomics is really important.
Sure it's fine to get by for an hour or two but spending 8 hours 5 days a week on one is a really bad idea and will provide a great path to crippling RSI. In fact using any laptop that much is a bad idea, due to the bad posture it provides (with the screen attached to the keyboard). This is why docking stations are still so important.
> 11" laptops are not fine to type on all day unless you give them huge bezels (even the 11" macbook which did have those huge bezels was space-constrained on the less important keys). Ergonomics is really important.
Well, it depends on personal preferences.
I usually go for at least 15" in my laptops, but I can believe that other people would be fine with 11" for what they are doing.
The laptop / tablet hybrid is a valid form factor, and these systems are reasonably successful in the market.
Of course, that doesn't mean that they are the right device for everyone.
> (Someone who kept insisting on this finally admitted that they couldn't do a spreadsheet on a phone or tablet.)
I think that's to generative AI, I would expect people to gradually replace manually creating a spreadsheet with 'vibecoding' it.
> 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.
ChromeOS already works like that, when you log in on different devices, without having to physically lug one device around that you plug into different shells.
Laptops + docking stations are usually just as fast as a desktop. You can buy $10,000 desktops that are much faster (50+ cores, and a lot of RAM), but most developers don't find them enough faster to be worth it. (in my benchmarks rebuilds with 40 cores finished faster than rebuilds using all 50, for a 10+million line C++ project) It is easier to have everything locally where you are. If like many of us you sometimes work from home remote into a different machine is always a bit painful.
I think this is a really good take - Apple especially (but Google too) aren't gonna naturally invest time and resources into software that'll make you less likely to buy more of their hardware.
That said, market incentives can and do change pretty fast. Especially with climate change, and current tension in global supply chains, we could see a shift away from hardware caused by taxes or pirce hikes (I'm not saying we will though).
That'd be a game changer for how much companies might invest in changing what computing looks like.
> the compute on a phone is now good enough to do most things most users do on desktop.
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 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 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.)
Yes! I enjoy KDEConnect a lot for that :) With the phone being the computer, the latency can probably be made low enough that it just feels like a proper touchpad
> 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
Approximately no-one was watching 4k feature-length videos on their phones in 2005, or playing ray traced 3d games on their laptops.
Sending plain text messages is pretty much the same as back then, yes. But these days I'm also taking high resolution photos and videos and share those with others via my phone.
> I hope they'll also allow the phone's screen to be used like a trackpad.
Samsung's DeX already does that.
> 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.
Your own 'good enough' logic already suggests otherwise? Processors are still getting cheap and better, so why not just duplicate them? Instead of having a dumb large screen (and keyboard) that you plug your phone into, it's not much extra cost to add some processing power to that screen, and make it a full desktop pc.
If we are getting to 'thin client' world, it'll be because of 'cloud', not because of connecting to our phones. Even today, most of what people do on their desktops can be done in the browser. So we likely see more of that.
> Approximately no-one was watching 4k feature-length videos on their phones in 2005, or playing ray traced 3d games on their laptops.
Do people really do this now? Watching a movie on my phone is so suboptimal I'd only consider it if I really have no other option. Holding it up for 2 hours, being stuck with that tiny screen, brrr.
I can imagine doing it on a plane ride when I'm not really interested in the movie and am just doing it to waste some time. But when it's a movie I'm really looking forward to, I'd want to really experience it. A VR headset does help here but a mobile device doesn't.
you position it vertically against something in bed and keep it close enough (half a meter) so that its practically same size as tv which is 4-5 meters away and you enjoy the pixels. i love doing this few times a week when im going to sleep or just chilling
We were watching videos and playing games on our laptops in 2005. Of course they mostly weren't 4K or raytraced, don't be silly.
The thin client world is one anticipating a world with fewer resources to make these excess chips. It's just a speculation of what things will look like when we can't sustain what is unsustainable.
> We were watching videos and playing games on our laptops in 2005. Of course they mostly weren't 4K or raytraced, don't be silly.
The video comment was about phones. The raytracing was about laptops.
Yes, laptops were capable of watching DVDs in 2005. (But they weren't capable of watching much YouTube, because YouTube was only started later that year. Streaming video was in its infancy.)
> It's just a speculation of what things will look like when we can't sustain what is unsustainable.
Huh? We are sitting on a giant ball of matter, and much of what's available in the crust is silicates. You mostly only need energy to turn rocks into computer chips. We get lots and lots of energy from the sun.
How is any of this unsustainable?
(And a few computer chips is all you save with the proposed approach. You still need to make just as many screens and batteries etc.)
Our disagreement is probably in the "mostly only need energy to turn rocks into computer chips". I think our economy is a lot more fragile and complicated than that. And that economy relies on non-renewable resources which are dwindling, in a world which is posed to offer less of its renewable resources, which includes people and their labor. (This is a compounded problem, since people and their labor are what would drive recycling, say, to extract gold from old chips.) And important knowledge (say, about how to make CPUs) is something that can be lost with just an unlucky coincidence, or something like another world war.
You don't need to imagine a total economic collapse. Take any resource that goes into a chip, and contrive any reason we'll have to consume significantly less of that resource. How do you solve that?
Well, we have highly-redundant compute-per-person. I personally have nine pretty capable computer chips to my person, just in the building I'm in. That's a lot, and that represents an excess in resource consumption. A phone-as-motherboard laptop solves one of those chips. If we make the same games we're making today but we go back a decade or two in graphics, then we can have fewer consoles and gaming PCs, too.
I'm not saying "one chip for many devices" is a panacea. There are other things we might do. Maybe laptops and phones can be made to have display input, for example.
> And that economy relies on non-renewable resources which are dwindling, [...]
We are sitting on a giant ball of matter. None of our resource use is actually using up material, we are just transforming matter.
We might be running out of resources that are cheap and easy to transform (eg cheap oil), but all of these are problems we can fix with enough energy. And eg solar power is going to provide more and more cheap energy. Fusion is also going to come to the rescue in a few decades (and we already had nuclear fission for ages.)
The economy is pretty resilient. Not even a global pandemic left all that much of a mark three years later.
> Take any resource that goes into a chip, and contrive any reason we'll have to consume significantly less of that resource. How do you solve that?
With substitution, economising and ingenuity. Eg early transistors were made of gallium, but we use silicon these days. That's a substitution.
> Well, we have highly-redundant compute-per-person. I personally have nine pretty capable computer chips to my person, just in the building I'm in. That's a lot, and that represents an excess in resource consumption.
Less than you'd think. These days, the main expense is for the power to run your chips, less so than the energy to make the chips. And having redundant chips around that aren't turned on doesn't cost any of the former.
> If we make the same games we're making today but we go back a decade or two in graphics, then we can have fewer consoles and gaming PCs, too.
Btw, that's one of the answers about what people would do in case of resource shortage for making chips.
> I'm not saying "one chip for many devices" is a panacea.
And I'm saying it would only save you a few chips, but wouldn't save you on batteries nor screens etc.
(And even a 'dumb' screen needs quite a few chips these days.) Hey, even Apple's chargers have more powerful chips in them these days than their first stand alone computers a few decades ago had.
---
Btw, you can economise on powerful chips even more, if you do most of the heavy computing in the cloud: even your combined phone/laptop/desktop chip would still be idle most of the time. The cloud can eg use one million chips for three million people. That's even better than one chip for one person (which you touted as better than nine computers for one person.)
I think ultimately, we disagree about whether or not it's inevitable that we end up having an economy that can transform sunlight into a perpetual recycling machine. I think that's not inevitable, especially in a scenario where we're left dealing with a climate collapse.
Having 'target display mode' on laptops and whatnot is one way that would save the chips that go into screens, which is why I mentioned it above. I agree that computing in the cloud can also reduce the number of chips used (although that does rely on chips to keep the internet going, etc.)
> I think that's not inevitable, especially in a scenario where we're left dealing with a climate collapse.
A 'climate collapse' is extremely unlikely. Look at studies on the (prospected) economic impacts of climate change. Wikipedia has an article on it, for example.
In any case, the forecasts expect something like perhaps 20% total reduction in GDP over say the next 100 years compared to the scenario without global warning. (But that's on top of our regularly scheduled single-digit percent per year regular economic growth.)
20% is a huge impact! It's bigger than Brexit. But it's also only about as big as the per capita gap between the US and the UK. And the UK is far from a collapsed nation.
And: in case you want to mention that the economy ain't everything. Yes, I totally agree. That's why my argument works in reverse: the economy can only function when the environment hasn't totally collapsed. Thus if leading experts project around a 20%-ish reduction in GDP, that means that the don't project a collapse in the environment.
As a sanity check: financial markets also don't seem to expect a collapse of the global economy anytime soon.
Yes it can, it can also become a keyboard in fact.
One thing I'm kinda missing is that it doesn't seem to be able to become both at the same time on a system that has the screen space for that. Like a tablet or Z Fold series.
:D I avoid Samsung products but I'm happy that at least exists. I hope it's not patented, and Google is both able to put the same thing into Android, and that it's available in AOSP
This concept has been floating around for a long time. I think Motorola was pitching it in 2012, and I'm sure confidential concepts in the same vein have been tried in the labs of most of the big players.
> 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.
I don't see that at all.
That's because I think over time the processing power of a eg laptop will become a small fraction of its costs (both in terms of buying and in terms of power).
The laptop form factor is pretty good for having a portable keyboard, pointing device and biggish screen together. Outsourcing the compute to a phone still leaves you with the need for keyboard, pointing device and screen. You only save on the processor, which is going to be a smaller and smaller part.
> 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.
Even in your scenario, most of your devices will be idle most of the time anyway. And they don't use any energy when turned off. So you are only saving the cost to acquire the processor itself.
Desktop computer processors that can hit the computing power of a mobile processor are really, really cheap already today.
You are ignoring data location and software installs.
Having all your data always with you stored locally (on your phone) is simpler than syncing and more private than cloud.
One OS with all your software. No need to install same app multiple times on different devices. Don't need to deal with questions like, for how many devices is my license valid for. However, apps would need to come with a reactive UI. No more separate mobile and desktop versions.
Example, you take a photos on your phone, dock it at your desk or laptop shell, and edit them comfortably on a big screen, with an app you bought and installed once. No internet connection is required.
A docking station could be more than just display and input devices. It could contain storage for backing up your data from the phone. Or powerful CPU and GPU for extended compute power (you would still use OS and apps/games on your phone with computations being delegated to more powerful HW).
This could replicate many things cloud offers today (excluding collaboration). No need to deal with an online account for your personal stuff. IMO, it would probably be less mystical than cloud to most users.
> Having all your data always with you stored locally (on your phone) is simpler than syncing and more private than cloud.
You need to sync it anyway. Having that phone with you all day also means exposing it to a lot of risk involving theft, drops and other kind of damage. You need that sync for backup purposes.
I agree actually having it on the phone is great though. I use DeX a LOT, it's a great way of working when I don't have my laptop with me but do have a docking station available (e.g. at the office when I forget my laptop or just dropped in unplanned)
Backup is a simple one way sync, but like you said, it is needed. It could still be private, if backup to another of your devices is made when your phone connects to your home WiFi.
You can (in principle) back of over the cloud and still have everything private. Encryption and open source software can handle that. (You want the software to be open source, so you can check that it's really end-to-end encrypted without a backdoor.)
Of course, that scenario would only become the norm, if there's mainstream demand for that. By and large, there ain't.
> You are ignoring data location and software installs.
Caching works well for that.
> Having all your data always with you stored locally (on your phone) is simpler than syncing and more private than cloud.
Have a look at how GMail handles this. It has my emails cached locally on my devices so I can read them offline (and can also compose and hit-the-send-key when offfline), but GMail also does intelligent syncing behind the scenes. It just works.
> Example, you take a photos on your phone, dock it at your desk or laptop shell, and edit them comfortably on a big screen, with an app you bought and installed once. No internet connection is required.
My devices are online all the time anyway.
> A docking station could be more than just display and input devices. It could contain storage for backing up your data from the phone.
I'm already backing up to the Cloud automatically. And Google handles all the messy details, even if my house burns down.
> Or powerful CPU and GPU for extended compute power (you would still use OS and apps/games on your phone with computations being delegated to more powerful HW).
How is that different from the ChromeOS scenario, apart from that the syncing in your case doesn't involve the cloud?
> This could replicate many things cloud offers today (excluding collaboration). No need to deal with an online account for your personal stuff. IMO, it would probably be less mystical than cloud to most users.
No, it would be more annoying, because I couldn't just log in anywhere in the world, and get access to my data. And I would have to manually bring devices in contact to sync them.
You can build what you are suggesting. And some people (like you!) will like it. But customers by-and-large don't want it.
Cache invalidation is hard. Offline-first is also hard and expensive to develop. Single source of truth + backup is simpler.
> No, it would be more annoying, because I couldn't just log in anywhere in the world, and get access to my data. And I would have to manually bring devices in contact to sync them.
You are traveling without your phone? I don't always have an unlimited internet when traveling. If you loose your phone while traveling there's a good chance you won't be able to log in due to 2FA anyway. Devices just have to connect to the same local network to sync. Phone probably connects to your WiFi automatically when you come home. Syncing over internet is also possible.
I'm just saying it could be done. Not that everybody would use it or like it. Although, I imagine getting rid of one dependency (cloud) and having more control would be a plus to some.
Cloud is not magically without issues. People do get locked out their cloud account due to some heuristics flagging it, payment issues, user errors or even political reasons. And it can take a very long time before you get it resolved. Last year there was even a story on HN about Google Cloud accidentally deleting customer's account and deleting all their data.
> But customers by-and-large don't want it.
Do you have any data backing this up?
Phone centered solution could be more cost effective. A casual user would only need a phone, a backup solution (either cloud based or an external drive connected to a network) and a bigger display with input devices (portable or desktop). Possibly one less subscription they have to pay and lower HW costs.
> Cache invalidation is hard. Offline-first is also hard and expensive to develop. Single source of truth + backup is simpler.
Yes, cache invalidation isn't trivial. But it's a software problem that you can solve (for your particular application, or with a library for many similar applications) with enormous economies of scale.
> I'm just saying it could be done. Not that everybody would use it or like it. Although, I imagine getting rid of one dependency (cloud) and having more control would be a plus to some.
Ok, no objection there. Yes, some people would like this.
My point is that cloud first, and local caching that lets you work offline (like what you get with GMail and Google Docs) works well enough for most people, that there's probably not enough market share left over for your offline-first dream to get the economics of scale.
Though it's probably still more than possible in the same way that running your desktop on Linux was feasible from the 1990s onwards: at times a bit clunky, but if you are willing to put up with it, totally doable. Been there, done that.
> Phone centered solution could be more cost effective. A casual user would only need a phone, a backup solution (either cloud based or an external drive connected to a network) and a bigger display with input devices (portable or desktop). Possibly one less subscription they have to pay and lower HW costs.
If you need an external display anyway (and a battery, if you want a laptop form factor), adding a bit of compute power to turn it into essentially a ChromeBook is close enough to free. You don't even need that much computing power, because instead of offloading the computation onto your phone (like your scenario), you offload the heavy lifting into the cloud (basically our real world right now for most people).
The HW costs aren't that much lower, because low performance chips are already pretty cheap.
> But it's a software problem that you can solve ... with enormous economies of scale.
Can be a problem for software that doesn't have such economies of scale.
Cloud is cheap for very basic usage, but costs can increase noticeably when workload increases.
Regarding UX. Some things work better in the cloud while some tasks are not so well suited for the cloud (e.g. latency sensitive tasks, task that require non trivial amount of data transfer between the user and the could).
I have no idea how many casual users would be affected by one or more of these things, if any. Phone centered user could still use cloud for some things. Maybe there would be enough interest, if polished solution becomes available. It could be you are right, I don't really know.
A laptop wins everytime because I don't have to carry around all my peripherals and set em all up again. Unless there's going to be dock setups in every conference room, coffee shop, table in my house, airplane, car, deck, etc, a laptop makes more sense.
Than what do you save? Only the system-on-a-chip (CPU, GPU, RAM).
And the hardware to get an SoC with phone-like performance in a laptop or desktop form factor is relatively cheap, just because you have so much more space and power and cooling to work with.
(Your laptop-shell definitely needs its own power supply, whether that be a battery or a cable, because the screen alone will take more power than your phone's battery can provide for any sustained period of use.)
Right but if it's the same as a laptop why not just use a laptop?
The only things I can think of are you really want to keep all the data on your phone and don't want to use cloud sync solutions (Dropbox etc.), or you really want to save a couple of hundred dollars getting a (probably terrible) laptop without a motherboard. Not very compelling IMO.
Surely long term it'd be cost? A screen and a keyboard in a laptop shell should be a lot cheaper that a screen, a keyboard, RAM, SSD, fans etc in a laptop shell.
Those other parts of the laptop are cheap though. Sure not free, but chromebooks can be had new for just a few hundred $$$ (they don't need a fan either). If you want a fast laptop you need to spend a lot of money, but a fast laptop has the ability to have better RAM, SSDs and such than your phone because there is more space in that form factor and so if you want fast you are back to laptop while if you don't need fast your laptop is cheap.
this done well is a transformational thing, its just no one has been willing to invest yet
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.
AIUI, the main problem in the cell phone era is that by the time you create a notebook shell with an even halfway-decent screen, keyboard, battery, and the other things you'd want in your shell, it's hard to sell it next to the thing right next to it that is all that, but they also stuck a cheap computer in it (and is therefore no longer a dock). Yeah, it's $50 more expensive, but it looks way more than $50 more useful.
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.
BTW you don't even need a dock if you have a USB-C monitor with USB and audio ports, which is not that uncommon. The monitor acts like a USB hub, so if you plug in your keyboard and mouse that's your computer essentially
> 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.
Still in the "smart" era, but the Motorola Atrix allowed that, but with its own laptop form factor dock.
I had one of these Atrix and laptop docks. It was really good, but sadly way ahead of its time. The desktop was a Debian-based Linux desktop and you could install various ARM packages. Unfortunately, the phone just wasn't powerful enough at the time. The touchpad was also not brilliant compared to Macs (probably better than Windows touchpads of the time). I sold it on ebay to a guy who plugged his Raspberry Pi into it, since the Atrix dock used mini HDMI and microUSB connectors. This has obviously been replaced in the modern age with USB-C.
I am pretty sure that modern phones are more than powerful enough! My wife's iPhone 16 Pro Max would be amazingly useful if not limited by iOS (which always feels like it's hiding true capabilities behind an Etch-A-Sketch interface to me). If you could plug the iPhone in and run a macOS desktop (which hasn't really changed for 15+ years), that'd be great. Thanks in advance.
I have a POCO F7 Ultra which is powerful enough to run LLMs via PocketPal and could easily replace my daily laptop or PC for work if it wasn't scuppered by USB2 on the USB-C port. If I could easily run ollama on the phone via a web interface I would because it's faster than my main PC for LLMs I think!
On Android you can go into Developer settings and force enable the ability to use desktop mode but sadly I can't without proper display support on the USB C.
> 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.
There have been multiple attempts at this over the years.
I think power was a real problem. A 2010 phone was bit as close to a laptop in performance.
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.
Agreed. For this reason I'm quite excited about glasses like the Xreal One Pro. Having to carry around with me just my phone, a pair of glasses and a lightweight Bluetooth keyboard would be a game changer for me in terms of ergonomics.
Do you have this yet? I wonder how well it works in practice. I know some people using it with DeX but they're pretty expensive (around $400 I think) so I didn't try it myself.
I remember there was a fad I think in 2009 or 2010 where a bunch of Android manufacturers released 'laptops' (just a display and keyboard) with a dock connector in the back that was meant to turn the phone into a laptop basically
Well, they are a generation ahead in many perspective than desktop UIs, so.
E.g. android/ios has better security than Windows/GNU Linux/MacOS, much more reliable suspend/wake functionality, much better battery management, etc.
Like it's a 50/50 chance my laptop with Win 11 will wake up fully charged or fully discharged in the morning, and whether it will be kind enough to actually be ready for work, or I can go brew a coffee before it's ready..
Since Windows has started this iteration of their move to ARM, I wondered if Microsoft would be the first to do this properly, by building an adaptable/mobile Desktop/UX to Windows 12 (or 13), pumping up the Microsoft Store, and then relaunching the Windows (Surface, I guess) Phone with full fat Windows on it.
In a way it's the same strategy that Nintendo used to re-gain a strong position in gaming (including the lucrative Home Console market where they'd fallen to a distant last place) - drafting their dominance in Handheld into Home Console by merging the two.
I strongly agree, and have felt this way for a long time. We are being sold many processors, each placed into their own device. The reality is our phone processor could be used to run our TVs, streaming devices, monitors, VR glasses, consoles, laptops, etc. That's less profitable, however.
With cables, yes. And LG did that for a while in fact, they had a VR headset that would plug into the phone: https://www.cnet.com/reviews/lg-360-vr-review/ It wasn't a success but this was more software-related and also some hardware-skimping. It was a good idea, it just seems like the devs forgot to actually try using it before declaring it a finished product.
But wireless the lag is so bad that it's not really usable. Like Wireless DeX. Definitely not good enough for processor-less VR glasses (even the wireless VR streaming from meta does require significant processing power on the glasses end).
in a sense apple is already doing this, since there's shared chip tech in the laptops and phones.
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.
Apple is intentionally hampering the desktop experience on the iPad and is very late in brining Stage Manager to the iPhone (the rumor is now iOS 19). Until there is serious competition (this and/or improvements to DeX, Apple will drag their feet because they want to sell you three compute device categories (or four if you count the Vision Pro).
Also, stage manager is not a good way of doing real work. It's with good reason that people abhor it on the Mac. On an iPad with no better alternative it's workable but not great.
So true! I have experimented with plugging an iPad Pro into an Apple 7K Studio Monitor with keyboard and an Apple Trackpad and Stage Manager: close to being generally useful, but I also get the idea that Apple is purposely holding back to prevent reducing Mac sales.
That is why I am rooting for Samsung DeX and what Google is offering: Samsung and Google can make money for their own reasons making a universal personal digital device.
They have the hardware. They don’t provide ANY software for this kind of thing though. And there is a very real chance it could cannibalize some Mac sales.
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.
True! Apple’s already ahead with the shared chip setup between Macs and iPhones. But yeah, for real work, nothing beats a proper laptop — big screen, keyboard, good speakers. I’ve tried using a phone with accessories too… not the same vibe. Maybe foldables will change that someday!
This is the only natural path if mobile chips are going to keep getting faster, everyone with a flagship phone is "wasting" so much good compute resources that never gets utilized.
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 :)
> everyone with a flagship phone is "wasting" so much good compute resources
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.
At least here, everyone I know and see does 'phone calls' with whatsapp and ear buds; I never see anyone holding a phone to their ears or using the GSM network to call actual numbers and I see a lot of people. Also, most prefer text chat anyway. This includes my 80+ parents. I wouldn't need a calling sim if not for sms from some vital services for quite a few years now. It being docked or not makes no difference for that; I wouldn't notice if my phone didn't have built in speakers: for calls we use bluetooth headphones, for music a Bluetooth speaker.
I travel a lot and do not like carrying things, so xreal and phone are more than enough for coding while going day long, easily augmented with a small power bank (unlike a laptop), with all of that fitting in my pockets after I drop my luggage at the hotel. Most my colleagues have macbooks and while they have good battery life, it is no comparison: the search for places with power outlets starts when I am not even at 50%. It is not an apples to apples as I do a lot of compute in the cloud, but even with that on the laptops, they still last a lot shorter and you cannot plug in normal power banks.
Do you actually work on the xreal like this, in DeX? I really wonder what it's like. They're so expensive it's hard to invest in one (I don't have America-level purchasing power)
Yes, it works very well. The new ones are better, but I have the Air 2 and they work very well for this, no need for taking my laptop anywhere anymore.
If people waste fancy silicon on phones, yes very much. While people use browsers and apps they're hardly multitasking like you would with a modern computer. A lot of good horsepower left for more advanced use cases.
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.
> If people waste fancy silicon on phones, yes very much.
The silicon only has to be fancy, because phones are so constraint in terms of space, power and cooling.
Getting phone-like performance in a desktop or laptop form factor and power and cooling budget is a lot simpler and cheaper.
> They don't have to buy a new device but can still get a mouse/keyboard/display combo and so some "productivity tasks".
The point was that they do have to buy a new device. The only thing they don't have to buy is new silicon. But that's trivial compared to everything else.
Thanks for your in-depth simplification of thermal budgets and updating me on the hardness of buying processes silicon? How do you know what the person I replied to mean when I don't?
Yes I have several of those and they still work with my S23. Not sure why they don't sell them anymore. It was a great idea. The fan is even dynamic, it knows how hot the phone is (even if it's in a case so the phone must be reporting it over USB somehow).
There was a second version which was flat so you could use the phone as touchpad. But it was thick, lacked ethernet port so it wasn't really worth it IMO. When you use a dock it's trivial to use a mouse, way better than any touchpad.
> If they nail the Linux container UX as well as ChromeOS
…
>Imagine thst a large userbase could just skip the laptop and desktop in favor of a USB-C dock and a decent display :)
Yeah - I don’t think the user base interested in container UX is “large” in relation to the mobile world.
Also, who wants to carry around a display with its own battery, a keyboard with its own batteries, a mouse/trackpad (batteries) and cables for the above? At some point it’s honestly easier to just grab a MacBook Air and walk out the door.
Umm no, the mouse/keyboard/display combo would be something you have at work and maybe at home... I'm not suggesting people start hauling 27" displays for shits and giggles, computing from a phone doesn't seem that fun.
And I don't know, the container UX people didn't exist for ChromeOS before ChromeOS made it easy to run Linux apps that way so.
Scrcpy recently added support for Virtual Display. This allows connecting your phone at any resolution e.g. 1920x1080. But vanilla android by default does not have a taskbar in that mode.
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.
I've tried it. I was pretty impressed. I plugged in a USB-C hub with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor and everything worked immediately, even the Windows key on the keyboard.
Android has supported basic peripherals and screen mirroring for a decade at least, and several vendors have tried to bring plug-in phones to the market as desktop alternatives. The fact people still find out about this feature today shows how badly the feature was marketed. Samsung Dex is good enough for 90% of office work these days, if not more. For a short time you could even run fully-fledged Ubuntu through DeX, which would've made the phone a full desktop replacement.
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..
Yeah LG had some really great idea and actually went through with them into actual product (kudos for taking the risk there). But they were horribly bad at selling them, in many cases at the execution of the idea, and also at continued support. This automatically shifted some great ideas into the worthless gimmick category :(
I always thought that MS will make something like that. Android phone with "business" app store and docking support for external screen and peripherals. IIRC one of the last windows phones was from HP with dock support. I guess after the windows phone they just gave up.... There was an attempt at making dual screen ms android phone which was a failure (at least from business perspective).
> My phone is more than powerful enough to act as a travel laptop, yet its potential is constrained by a small touch screen..
In case glasses are an option, I heard that Xreal glasses can be hooked up to Android phones directly. Such a setup with a proper Android desktop mode (or even better: a Linux VM with all one's dotfiles and everything) would be fantastic IMO.
sadly that "windows" key is what i dont like on Android
I use Moonlight to remote to my desktop. Moonlight on Windows can capture Windows key(and some other shortcut like alt-tab) and redirect to remote machine.
Moonlight on Android can't do that, the dev this is Android issue and can't do anything about it.
This is the thing that bummed me out the most about Microsoft exiting the phone market.
I know Windows isn’t super popular around here, but the idea of carrying one device that I can just dock to work on always intrigued me.
There’s just no way this is taking off with any significant market share in the business world anytime soon being android only, and Apple will never adopt it because they want you to buy 3 different devices. Such a great concept, and with the performance of mobile chips getting so good, very viable.
The problem with this idea is that it's unattainable.
Let's start with something simpler: a living room. There's no universal design that would fit just any living room. The layout and the set of furniture that would work for my living room will not work for yours. Size, shape, windows, doors, connection to other spaces - everything matters. If you want a great design for your living room, you literally need to start from your specific living room.
There's a great idea -- why don't we come with a resizable (reflowable?) design that could fit any living room in the world? While this idea might be entertaining for an engineer's mind, it doesn't work in practice, unless you can settle for just a mediocre design.
Also, being intellectually honest, we need to attack the strongest Apple we can imagine, not a weak Apple that's easy for us to attack. And that strongest Apple will never adopt this idea because they aim to design the best computer/phone/tablet that they can, and in order to design that they need to start with the computer/phone/tablet.
The idea of a phone connecting to a display/keyboard/mouse and becoming a computer has the problem that you could either optimize your design for what you have with a phone, or for what you have with a display and peripherals. It will never be as good as the system designed from the ground up to be just a single thing. It's always nice to have options, but there won't be any mass adoption for the mediocre combo. It was dead in the water with Palm Foleo in 2007, it's just as dead in the water 18 years later.
> could either optimize your design for what you have with a phone, or for what you have with a display and peripherals. It will never be as good as the system designed from the ground up to be just a single thing.
This conclusion looks unsubstantiated to me when you speak of the modern devices that have a sufficient performance for most typical tasks. You probably can't design a gaming computer+phone but nothing prevents you from making a GNU/Linux phone able to work with different desktop environments depending in its current mode. Indeed PureOS and Mobian operating systems already offer that and work well on my smartphone (Librem 5).
Not talking about what's possible or impossible, just not seeing it gaining any significant market traction.
Modern pentathlon is a sport where athletes ("pentathletes") compete across five different events. Even the best of them would be mediocre at best at any specific event competing against athletes who have trained for that specific event.
While I love Hanlon's razor as much as anyone, I love Occam's razor even more. And the simple explanation for that is that people don't like to use a mediocre combo when they could be using several purpose-built devices which excel at a specific job.
I like to go around with my Leatherman, but when I have a real job I get my toolbox out instead.
> it usually can do most tasks sufficiently well
An RV could do many "car tasks" sufficiently well, and it can do many "home tasks" sufficiently well, too. And while it has its place, it can't compete against the car + home combo, which is why most people have cars and homes but not RVs.
> > or insufficient PR
>
> Aka "stupidity".
>
> While I love Hanlon's razor as much as anyone
Stupidity isn't necessary here. A small company simply has no resources for a large PR campaign.
Also, nothing prevents a performant iPhone from allowing a full desktop mode except artificial software restrictions resulted from the greediness. Follow the money.
This is exactly what we're asking for. We don't want to get rid of our tablets and laptops. But we want leatherman-level functionality from our phones.
That's perfectly fine. You can get it today from Samsung, or maybe soon from Google. My argument is that Leatherman is not going to sell anywhere remotely to the level of the combination of purpose-made tools that it seems to incorporate. You're welcome to disagree.
I'm not so sure about unattainable. Many programs exist that serve the user in very different contexts, for example responsive websites, web apps. Or games that work on console, like Steam Deck, and PC. Or the Nintendo Switch, which can be used in handheld mode, with a small screen and battery, or docked, connected to a TV. Controllers attached or unattached.
Now, I can see problems too: docked and portable modes need very different performance optimizations. But I'm sure that software can handle this, for example, IDEA IntelliJ has power save mode, and OS-es also demonstrated that they are fine on portable and connected systems alike, like MacOS, Windows, Linux.
It's also not a problem that some things are not available in both modes. For example, Switch has games that explicitly need docked mode, for example, Super Mario Party. Yet both the game, and the platform is popular.
I see no reason why a phone couldn't be a mediocre, or better PC.
A phone could be a mediocre PC. In my opinion, it will not gain any significant market share competing against other PCs -- mediocre ones, good ones, great ones, and "insanely great" ones too.
I can imagine a scenario when it's really useful, when portability is concerned. This segment right now is served by web apps, which essentially give the same end result, supposing a working internet connection: the user can have the same software and the same files on multiple systems, like a phone, and a PC. The device itself being portable would be the same, but infinitely more private: all the apps and files could live locally. Now, I don't know how large that market is, and I suspect that it's not that large, given that people are just fine with cloud based solutions.
In another words, I think that the functionality itself is very useful. It's just that it's currently being served somewhat adequately by cloud based solutions. For this reason, such a phone-pc product could not offer much in terms of functionality, and so, it might not be popular at all.
I don't think we can fairly compare a phone pretending to be a desktop against other desktops.
It would be more fair to compare a phone that has desktop features, to a phone that doesn't have desktop features.
So let's compare the best Apple phone that refuses to have a dex like experience; to a Samsung that has had a dex experience for about 10 years, or to a Google phone that is now adopting desktop experiences.
If the future is anything like the past, in 5 to 10 years from now we'll see a desktop experience on iPhone and they're going to be snobby about it.
You don't have to degrade the phone experience at all. Just add a Linux VM that it switches to when I plug it into a monitor and has access to my files and we're good.
To me, something along these lines is by far the best approach. Under Android, a Linux desktop could be virtualized on top of Android’s Linux kernel and under iOS, a macOS userland could be virtualized on top of iOS’ Darwin underpinnings.
It’s the only way you don’t end up compromising either half of the experience too much. Trying to converge both into a single UI as Microsoft previously did with Windows and GNOME is now trying to do now is a recipe for failure.
Do you have any examples of desktop UI interfaces that are impossible to create in a Dex like experience, that is possible on Linux, Mac, and Windows desktop experiences?
Or is it that mobile apps will never work great/ideally on desktop? And if that's the case, how is that worse than not having them at all?
My argument is not "this is impossible to create", my argument is "in my opinion this will not succeed in competition against purposefully-made devices." You're welcome to disagree, of course.
> There's no universal design that would fit just any living room.
Yes. This is why any furniture store that thinks that they can just offer three designs which would cover 90% of people is going to inevitably fail, as evidenced by Ikea. It's a ridiculous idea that same three designs could be adapted to living rooms across one country, let alone entire globe.
Oh wait. Half of the word's population uses the Bestå cabinets and Nordviken chairs.
While Windows RT / Windows 8 were largely panned, I think they had a lot of potential.
RT / 8 went very hard towards touch interfaces. Then 8.1 made a lot of course corrections to re-establish what's good about mouse + keyboard on Windows.
But... RT was abandoned alongside Windows Phone 7 / 8 and Windows 10 Mobile, and Windows 10 focused on mouse-keyboard once again without nearly as much thought about touch.
I really think this was one case where persistence would have paid off. A focus on "Windows everywhere" instead of (or alongside) "Microsoft apps that all exclusively push cloud services everywhere" could've put Microsoft in a position of mobile and convertible device dominance.
Editing to add, I was just reminded of the Surface Duo -- Android based. (And the announced but abandoned Surface Neo...) Another odd moment I'd describe as... "oh wait let's go back and try our old strategy but without any of the advantages of Windows app support on mobile!"
I have been using code-server (openvscode-server will also do) to run on a remote powerful machine and then connect to it from lesser devices (a phone in desktop mode would be good if I could do it!) via a VPN. Keeps all the source code remote.
The idea of a unified computer, resembles also with the idea when iPhone merged, calculator, mp3 player and phone.
With ubuntu's try a decade ago, https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge#/ it was obvious there is a market for this. But the ecosystem chain beats it all. Everyone will wait for their favorite OS to catchup.
It was called "Continuum" and was introduced with Windows 10 Mobile. Worked pretty smoothly but it couldn't run win32 application only the new modern UWP apps. Introduced 6 Oct 2015 alongside the Nokia Lumia 950/950 XL. Discontinued when Windows 10 Mobile reached end of support in Dec 2019.
UWP was limited because it was the subset that could run on PC, Xbox, Phone, and HoloLens. Being able to make one responsive app and deploy it across that ecosystem was pretty awesome.
But when you kill the non-PC platforms, you're just left with a reduced capability version of windows apps
I'm not aware of any Windows Phone implementation like this that existed commercially. Can you point me to it?
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.
They did. The lumia had this feature. It also had a liquid cooling system. But the windows computer was quite limited. This was before they migrated to windows one core.
I switched from a lifetime of iPhones to an android phone last year, just because of folding phones. They are amazing and IMO the reason why Apple is going to have issues as these get cheaper (unless they release a folding phone too). Now that I have all this screen estate the current UI feels limiting often.
Haha yeah, I’ve heard that too! Apple might be late to the foldable party, but you know how they do it — show up last and still steal the spotlight. If they really launch one, it’ll probably be super refined… and super pricey. Let’s see if they can change the game like they did with the notch!
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.
> 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?
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.
I'm fine with a heavier ones. And looking at the amounts of iPhones sold (including cases, holders and whatever) the weight isn't a factor for the many.
It's not like Apple hasn't had the ability to release a folding phone since the display technology has existed for years. The tricky part of releasing a folding phone is figuring out how you're going to handle the incredibly high warranty claim rate when screens spontaneously fail.
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.
The screen of foldable phones is still smaller than most tablets, and there’s a reason iPads offer something like Stage Manager for (larger) external screens (disregarding for the moment its janky implementation). Meaning, the screen size of foldable phones doesn’t change that much about the usefulness of being able to connect to a desktop-size screen.
I have the huwai xt fold, folds out to a 10.3 inch screen. I remote to a windows 11 computer and can do full development on it with a folding keyboard with builtin trackpad
Isn't harmonyOS supposed to be a fully convergent operating system too? I have no perspective on how the device works though, I've been very interested does it run that? Will it have Linux containers?
I've come to my senses since but it is quite enjoyable to use MANY monitors. One with the website, one with the css, some article about css, mdn, youtube, mail, irc, etc. A single giant display is also something entirely different.
I switched from iPhone to android a month ago and it was so awful that I just went back to using my old phone. I treat the android device as essentially a powerbank with a camera, and even that it's bad at. plug it into my PC to transfer pictures? no response
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.
>The only folks who ever have problems are people who need to be told how to use their devices.
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.
you p much repeated what i said. you want to be told how to use your phone. you'll use the apps that you're given to do the tasks they decide you can do on your phone. that's fine. that's why stock ios exists.
but the person i was replying to was acting like android doesn't work. They were trying to do things that their chosen walled-garden(apple/ios) prevents them from doing, then blaming anything but their walled-garden. they were showing clear bias.
>you p much repeated what i said. you want to be told how to use your phone. you'll use the apps that you're given to do the tasks they decide you can do on your phone. that's fine.
No, I have said entirely different thing.
Try to climb off you horse and maybe you will notice the difference between "apps you are given" and "apps I decided to use that are available on the market".
>but the person i was replying to was acting like android doesn't work
Well, that person was too emotional and given us almost no details.
But to be honest the way Android behaves (unless you want to hack most of it) - it can be described as "doesn't work" from iOS user's perspective. And no, not because of "walled garden" or some other bs you imagine. Most of the time android phones (yes, even top models) simply lag (or start lagging over the time). Not to mention that the base line quality of software is simply lower than on iOS.
>they were showing clear bias.
And so are you. You are doing _exactly_ the same when writting things like "walled-garden" and "you want to be told"
get your head out of your own arse. it's got fuck all to do with needing to be told what to do; you should see the level of customisation I have set up on my laptop. the overriding issue here is that if you're doing things on your phone that require massive customisability then you're doing something wrong. phones are for calling, photos, music and occasionally looking something up. almost anything else you should be doing with a keyboard and mouse. a phone that you have to constantly dig through the settings and install a million utility apps to make bearable is a bad phone. a phone you have to pay a grifter to transition you to using is a bad phone
>Idk how something can barely work as a camera/powerbank unless user error is present.
I literally explained this in the comment. the device doesn't connect to my laptop when I plug it in, meaning that I can't transfer photos off it easily
your entire comment smells viciously of "oh my god! how dare he not have had a good experience with android. my poor baby android..."
if I was biased I wouldn't have bought an android in the first place
you're clearly using it wrong and blaming the device.
multiple people have explained to you that you're the issue and your response is to get angry, throw around insults, and reiterate that you're using it wrong.
you bought into a walled garden, then acting like everything outside your self-imposed garden is wrong.
it's telling that you've not actually addressed anything I said. you're just repeating yourself and appealing to the authority of others. you've quite clearly decided that Android is your "team" and you're just going to aggressively defend it and insult anyone who threatens that, and yes, you too were throwing around insults, just because they were less explicit does not mean you get to play as if you're the adult in the room
there's a difference between liking a walled garden and preferring a phone that just works pleasantly with all the features you need straight out of the box, and the fact that you're choosing to misunderstand this shows that you're just completely unobjective. and of course you are, you've literally explained your vested interest in this. it's like trying to argue atheism to an evangelical priest
besides, if we were talking about tablets or laptops or anything that you might actually want to do work on, then a walled garden is a huge issue, a massive dealbreaker. but as far as I'm concerned you're kidding yourself if you think your phone needs a wider pool of features than a Nokia from 2007
Is your PC a Mac? Apple doesn't support MTP because they want iPhones to look good or something. Every other OS with a reasonably complete Desktop Environment will allow mounting an Android device as what appears pretty much as a standard USB drive. It's part of why I prefer Android. Using an iPhone on Linux/BSD is just not worth the hassle.
> mounting an Android device as what appears pretty much as a standard USB drive
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.
They're talking about MTP, which is supported by every modern (and old) Android device AFAIK. It's not exactly a USB Mass Storage device, but as long as you're not on a Mac, it behaves basically the same as one.
Ah, I was mistaken. I thought they were saying that the reason Apple supports MTP (as opposed to UMS) is not that they want to make iPhones look good, but for some other unspecified reason (which I assumed was patent licensing). But they were actually saying that Apple does not even support MTP.
I think it’s more that MTP is an awful protocol than anything else. It’s slow and flaky even under OSes that support it. It’s shocking to me that with all of the brilliant people working for Google, nobody has managed to figure out a better replacement.
Maybe I've just been extraordinarily lucky but it's been nether of those things for me. It's also far superior to Apple's go through iTunes/Finder garbage protocol IMO.
Not saying that Apple has anything better, but I really don’t feel like the problem is adequately solved on Android either.
The easiest thing in my mind would be to use USB mass storage, with the storage presented to the connected computer being virtualized with a layer reconciling changes with actual storage on the fly (which the current MTP implementation already does anyway), solving the problem that USB mass storage traditionally has arising from two systems mounting the same chunk of disk at once.
That would work everywhere and remove the need for a bizarre protocol borrowed from Windows XP.
I have been an iPhone user since 2009, but take 'Android-excursions' every few years. I am currently using a Pixel 9 and I can't see why it would be worse than an iPhone. Functionality-wise they are pretty much on-par. Sure, there are some differences, Pixels have much better AI functionality, iPhones better Mac integration. But I don't see a clear advantage of either, except that Android hardware is much more affordable (you can pick up a still pretty-ok Pixel 8a new for 379 Euro here currently) and Android has more customizability (but good out-of-the-box defaults).
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.
Curious to know what phone you got. A Pixel 9 with GrapheneOS is so much better than any iOS devices from my experience. But since users you have more freedom on Android, this will depend on what you do with it (e.g me, I use Syncthing to locally sync all my files and photos with several devices -- no cloud / subscription needed).
I want my photos on my laptop. why would I go to the trouble of messing around trying to find an app, installing it on both devices, trusting some additional third party with my photos when I can just plug it in and transfer?
why would I sync them using an app I need to install on both devices, an additional third party I have to deal with, when there's zero technological reason I shouldn't be able to literally just plug it in with its charging cable? it's just overcomplicating matters
I just tried syncthing, and first of all I do not trust the fork of the app present on the app store, second of all, christ is it slow. why would I ever rely on this when I should be able to just use a usb cable? it's like trying to say that you should just screen mirror all your content to your TV rather than use a HDMI. bizarre
is it a skill issue that it doesn't just plug and play into my laptop? is it a skill issue that swiping from the left goes back to the previous page and swiping from the right also goes back to the previous page? is it a skill issue that google translate requires me to have the google search app installed? and that the google search app puts a big fuck off search bar in the middle of my home screen, of which the only simple way to remove is to delete the app?
Yes. It literally protects your precious photos from being stolen if you plug your phone somewhere else, but the only thing you need to pull down the notification bar and tap to allow the file transfer.
Like it notifies you when you plug it in, if you didn't notice it even once - how can it be not a skill issue?
> is it a skill issue that swiping from the left goes back to the previous page and swiping from the right also goes back to the previous page
... in what app? If this is Chrome then ask Google why. Or install Firefox, DuckDuckGo or whatever else.
> is it a skill issue that google translate requires me to have the google search app installed
Yes, Google tries to stick it's d** everywhere. Just like Apple, though you don't talk shit about Greatest Jobs' Company, because you like it.
BTW, I have an official Google Translate app and I don't have the Search bullshit on the home screen. I literally have nothing except DDG and Camera shortcuts. Android 12, Moto G8. Because you know, you can disable apps.
by plug and play I obviously wasn't referring to the laptop just offering up my photos unlocked. I was talking about plugging it in, unlocking the device and nothing happening. there is no notification, and nothing in the notification bar. this would never happen on an iPhone. this should have been very obvious to anyone paying even the slightest attention
>... in what app? If this is Chrome then ask Google why. Or install Firefox, DuckDuckGo or whatever else.
in every app. it's a feature of the system, just like you can swipe from the side of the screen in almost every app on iOS. why on earth would I have said it if it was just in one app? again, this should have been very obvious to you
>Just like Apple, though you don't talk shit about Greatest Jobs' Company, because you like it.
what is with all this Android white-knighting? it's an operating system, not a protected species. I literally chose to buy an Android phone when I could have bought an iPhone, and somehow I'm biased? I could not care less about this pathetic semi-religious Android vs Apple war that you've got going on inside your head. they're not sports teams, they're tools, and unless you've got a very very specific use case, this tool's main feature should be the rapid, pleasant usability of a few simple features. they should not require concerted effort and research to set up. there are major issues with Apple, and there are major issues with Google, but for what I want in a phone, Apple makes a better OS. for what I want in a laptop, Apple makes a terrible OS.
>Android 12, Moto G8
you're 2 versions of Android behind what I have and you expect to speak as an authority on this?
> in every app. it's a feature of the system, just like you can swipe from the side of the screen in almost every app on iOS. why on earth would I have said it if it was just in one app? again, this should have been very obvious to you
No, it's not obvious for me. None of my Android phones behaved so and I don't think I can remember such behaviour on any other I saw or used.
> I literally chose to buy an Android phone when I could have bought an iPhone, and somehow I'm biased?
Yes, you are. You somehow equate your personal experience with the one unknown model and make to all Android phones ever. And despite people telling you what you are clearly missing something - you stubbornly insist it's not you but the Android.
> you're 2 versions of Android behind what I have and you expect to speak as an authority on this?
And my daily driver is Moto G54, Android 14. Any other pathetic excuses?
Re-posting this at top level, curious what others think.
Since Windows has started this iteration of their move to ARM, I wondered if Microsoft would be the first to do this properly, by building an adaptable/mobile Desktop/UX to Windows 12 (or 13), pumping up the Microsoft Store, and then relaunching the Windows (Surface, I guess) Phone with full fat Windows on it.
In a way it's the same strategy that Nintendo used to re-gain a strong position in gaming (including the lucrative Home Console market where they'd fallen to a distant last place) - drafting their dominance in Handheld into Home Console by merging the two.
I think it would end up exactly like the last time they tried that with the mobile-oriented Windows 8. Nothing has changed since then that would make an attempt any easier. Windows has far too much legacy cruft and everything's spread across a dozen different GUI toolkits and design languages. They still haven't even managed to completely eliminate Control Panel after 13 years of trying.
It's worse even than the "vital apps" ecosystem - who would leave their preferred "walled garden" when so many dials have been set to make that the maximum frustration?
Microsoft has built Android app support into Windows, and phobe hardware is a lot more powerful than it used to be.
If they really try to make a convergent Windows phone, I think they could make it if they manage to integrate Android apps into the Windows mobile UI. However, we are talking about Microsoft, so I doubt they'd actually manage to do it.
At this point I want a choice other than Apple and Google/Samsung (Samsung phones with google software is the most common combination in that eco system. The more choices people have the more all of the above have to play nice.
This is very good news. Especially in light of recent attention given to the possibility of CPU shortages. Lots of programming tasks can be done comfortably on a smartphone. For example, no build front end programming. The description "desktop view" is unfortunate since it calls to mind a browser mode where the site is displayed as it would be on a desktop. And this is something completely different. I do hope this mode does not require an external display because it would be quite useful even with the phone's native display. Especially given their hypixel density and the availability of reading glasses.
I’m not sure I follow on the cpu shortage front. Phone cpus by their nature are attached to a degrading-over-time battery, and are much more power constrained… I have an already 6 year old i7 in my desktop… it can keep up with modern software still in a “I don’t even think about it” manner, which is to say I cranks through anything other than a large numerical simulation (dang Intel, I would have needed to go to an i9 to get AVX-512 back then I think).
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.
They could be implying it would help with shortages by making it so that the CPUs already in phones are better utilized, decreasing the demand for new CPUs.
When I first saw samsung, I was sure we would soon see a world where laptops were obsolete bc you would just plug your phone into some dock attached to a keyboard, mouse, and display, and that would be your workflow.
I am surprised it never came to fruition. I guess its more profitable for manufacturers to push you to get a range of devices in all form factors (macbook + ipad + iphone).
Or, most people keep essentially no important data on their devices (everything is in clouds) so there is no need to manually sync data between a person's devices,
eliminating the main benefit to having fewer devices.
Every year or so I've been toying with the idea of a thin client dev environment. Smallest possible device that can run Linux (or a RDP client) and support being plugged in to a single USB-C dock cable (display, usb for keyboard/mouse and power).
Maybe this is the answer? Even though I don't need the screen, the footprint of a smartphone is smaller than almost all SBC supporting the above requirements.
I had a project related to this in a big telco about 10 years ago.
We used Citrix because a lot of apps were not native (yet).
Women in tech loved the concept: instead of carrying a laptop they could use the medium-size tablet we provided and have a wireless mouse and keyboard both at the office and at home. We also provided a monitor for both home and the office.
The project didn't lauch commercially because in our tests the microusb to micro-hdmi cables caused a lot of issues and management decided against it.
None of the mobile Linux distribution is working on this, even though it should be easier for them to fallback to a DE than for Android to invent a new one.
Wish they would just adapt a full-featured Linux distro.
It seems to me the only difference between a phone with an extra screen, and a laptop with a SIM card, is the relative balance of power been the user and the vendor (Android restricts user capabilities for the benefit of Google).
How do we get back to the place where people expect a computer to have any number of peripherals, and be under the control of the user...?
https://plasma-mobile.org Does seem decent but the problem no major phone maker support it or make phones for it, in fact even linux desktop doesn't have may laptops/desktops "official" support,
My main issue with Android as a daily driver for desktop computing is the input latency. Even in high end devices, it's noticeable when typing and very noticeable for things like Alt-Tab and other desktop shortcuts. I wonder if this is fixable or if this is inherent to Android's architecture.
I noticed on lesser devices that their word-wrapping algorithm is very very slow, so inputting a large block of text in a native Android text box got slower and slower and slower and slower.
So who'll create a useable fold-up Fresnel-lens cover to turn that high-res high-dpi phone screen into something resembling a smallish monitor? I run Termux and sometimes Linux deploy on Android devices which turn these into fairly close equivalents to general-purpose pocket computers but even for my good eyes a somewhat bigger screen size at the native resolution would be preferable. Double the apparent size, keep the resolution and you'll get a perfectly useable 12" monitor.
I really look forward to desktop experience on Android tablets.
For personal use, 2-in-1 (laptop+tablet) conceptually makes a lot of sense. But I think 2-in-1 laptops go the wrong way -- they are full laptops with bad tablet experiences (because of weight, or desktop-first Windows OS). But I want a good tablet in 80% of time. If Android have reasonably good desktop support (e.g., keyboard, mouse, window management), a tablet with a detachable keyboard will be enough to cover the rest 20% of use cases where I want a laptop.
Agreed, mostly. I've still some issues regarding the "you won't have root on your device" thing.
However, if the whole stack is open-source and included in stock Android and appears in GOS, it will make me less wary of jumping to it.
Kind of reminds me of my dream in 2001 (although at that time, the core device was a Palm Pilot, not a phone): I want something that I can carry in my pocket and use anywhere, but I can also sit at a desk and connect to a display, keyboard and mouse (I’d prefer a trackpad now) and have a full computing experience. 24 years later and we’re slowly creeping towards that dream. I had hoped that the fact that iOS was based on MacOS meant that the iPhone was going to get there sooner rather than later, but not so much.
Finally! This is just shy of being 10 years late though. Lots of people would basically stop buying laptops with something like this on their phones (and that's why Apple will never do it)
I use what I call “pseudo DeX” on my Galaxy Tab S8+ constantly. It’s basically the entire DeX laptop like UI without the requirement to use an external monitor (there’s an actual name for it I can’t remember).
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.
Funny you mention stage manager, i remember the absolute online letdown/meltdown that happened when it didn't ship with the iPadOS version it was scheduled to. The other day i encountered the button for it and completely forgot it existed, but after launching it, I remembered how useless it is.
I used it fairly regularly with a device called NexDock, which is essentially just a laptop shell that acts as a screen, a keyboard, a track pad, and a battery for a USB-C connected device. I mostly used it for web browsing, chatting, and Termux (usually SSHing into another system, but not always).
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.
Yes! Have been using it since my first pair of 'AR' glasses when I want to get work done anywhere without dragging my laptop (corp or personal). If I ever find a folding bluetooth keyboard that can "lock" to remain stable in my lap, I'll be particularly happy.
I do sometimes. If I go to a friend's house with a big-screen TV and stereo, I can connect my USB-C dock, plug in the hdmi cable, and control from a mouse or the phone. Nice big display with multiple windows. Same for when I stay at hotels. I believe you can still get phones that have an HDMI out that's not DeX, but then you just see a scrunched up mobile phone display on a big-screen TV and no multiple windows.
It does seem odd to have what is pretty much a laptop and then plug your phone into it. Granted I have wanted this feature for a while/what I messed around with when I had my PinePhone Pro eg. running VS Code on it and I can't remember if I got a VM running on it or not. I've done it with an old 4GB ram Chromebook using GalliumOS.
I will say I probably didn't get a VM running on the PPP.
I could be remembering incorrectly, but wasn't this also a thing back in the Droid Bionic days? I remember being super thrilled at the idea of using my phone on a bigger external screen as another linux computer or TV screen.
Back in 2011 the Atrix could support a desktop mode with a dock, but not simply by plugging in a USB cable.
There was also a Motorola Ready mode which I experienced briefly on a Moto G that I bought but returned because the screen was horrid mush! (Not all Moto G, some had nice screens, but that particular one was a lower resolution, slow LCD screen with a lot of ghosting.)
But if I remember, Ready isn't really a standalone thing. It's more like what Microsoft Phone Link does - e.g. running your phone "desktop" but on another computer. But I think I'm remembering wrong... so maybe newer ones are a bit more like this - https://www.tomsguide.com/news/i-spent-a-few-days-with-motor...
It's weird. Android Authority already released a small article some days ago, with video, screenshots, and IIRC showing the way to enable it on the Android 16 preview [0]
Really hopeful this is the next frontier for mobile. Pair this with wider Field of view at glasses and a compact keyboard, and you can have a full it desktop environment in your pocket
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.
Yeah that's what immediately came to mind. This must be part of their effort to merge Chrome OS into Android. On the Chrome OS side they already said are going to be replacing the kennel and other system stuff with Androids guts.
That's sad news. ChromeOS is much faster and more efficient than Android. Turning off the Android subsystem in low-end Chromebooks is a huge performance boost, even when no Android apps are open.
To be fair, that’s likely because the Android subsystem is a virtual machine - not running multiple sets of system services / CPU emulation on a computer will make it faster pretty much universally.
It's not just the virtualization, ChromeOS has had a lot of work put into performance. The low-end ARM Chromebooks use the same hardware as budget Android devices, and they're noticeably faster. My Android phone uses more RAM doing nothing from a fresh boot than those Chromebooks even have.
That’s a good point actually. Windowed app performance on Android apps is especially bad since they’re not designed for it (most of my experience is on Android-x86, but window resizing performance is not great)
Fuchsia as the core makes much more sense. It replaces Linux for a start and completely changes the security model to something a LOT more defendable among a bunch of other benefits.
I worked on Android at Google until 2023 and can 99.999% confirm for you Fuchsia, as the outside understands it is DOA. (i.e. as some sort of next gen OS, and if not that, some kernel that's on track to replace Linux in Android)
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.
Thanks for that insight. Obviously there’s a lot of context in there that isn’t at all clear outside.
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.
You're seeing the public facing side of it as a wholesale Android replacement, think of this repo as the tip of the iceberg: well, it used to be, but the rest of the iceberg disappeared.
It's still shipping, successfully, on millions(?) of devices yearly via Nest Hubs and such. Never say never. But all public-facing signs are fairly clear, the big move is ChromeOS into Android, not Android onto Fuchsia - and note how invested Google is in the Nest Hubs (read: not at all, languished for years now)
(I'm also curious if we could get a stats-based thing on, say, 2019 vs. 2024, My out-of-thin-air prior would be 30% more activity in 2019 than now. But I also figured there was 10 commits a day now, not 100.)
(I tried checking out the whole repo, but then all the apps on my macbook informed me en masse there was 0 disk space left :X Doesn't look like there's a GitHub mirror)
(cheers btw, you're my kind of people, one of the more soul-sucking parts of Google was finding out that kind of person is few, and far between) (i.e. curious and into It, not just here to make your boss or partner happy)
I guess that’s the thing, when I now look at the commits it’s way past what’s reasonable for nest. I see chromium is rolled back in for example, flutter is back in there, everything seems to be getting the bazel treatment, I see a bunch of non publicly announced releases this year… like things are clearly happening on some level in a way that’s not entirely consistent with the idea of a product that is in the midst of a death roll.
Do you think it’s possible that thinking evolved slightly beyond the number of devices shipped in the meantime perhaps?
I’d always been on the opinion of even just assuming they got to a point where the whole starnix linux syscall compatibility layer thing (which is what I see a lot of recent commits pointing towards) to a good point and stopped that it would still make sense in so many use cases that it would have been justified.
It would also change the number of devices shipped question from 1 dying product line to billions overnight which certainly might change the conversation and furthermore would put them into a pretty unique commercial position for more high assurance computing given the security model which would have a lot of follow on effects presumably
Also thanks again for taking the time to answer, you’re right I am genuinely very curious about this.
Of course they will enshitten it into unusability, but in theory they could put one over on Apple with this. It's "only" the software that stops Apple's iDevices from being usable as development platforms or general purpose computers. Google could offer something here that Apple won't.
OTOH this seems like exactly the sort of thing that Apple could suddenly announce at a september event. As you say, there are no hard technical barriers to getting this working.
Wireless to what? Android Auto uses your car's computer + wifi/BT chip + screen.
If you want to connect to any screen then you cannot rely on wireless connections.
That doesn't mean there couldn't be some future that is wireless, but are there any standard wireless communication protocols that have reached critical mass / popularity?
The excitement I feel about this shows how effectively Google and Apple have stockholmed us. We have supercomputers in our pockets and we can't even use them for some of the most fundamental computing tasks.
@dang why is this flagged? The flagging system on this site is so incredibly bad. It’s always a tiny handful of users trying to control what others can see with zero logical consistency.
I flagged earlier because the first submission appeared to be blogspam by a new account posting only from that domain. The replacement article from Android Authority is much better.
In practice it bears almost zero resemblance to its stated functionality and instead is really just an extension of personal preferences of a tiny minority of people. It’s embarrassingly unfit for purpose. This happens all the time where stories get flagged for no reason.
It's not a tiny minority of people. The karma threshold for flagging is deliberately kept low so this isn't the case.
> 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.
Your response to the prior implied flagging is based on a deliberate choice of karma, to widen the gate on who can flag.
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.
Adopting this feels like a very risky proposition given Google's tendency to drop support for things. Samsung have supported DeX for almost a decade now.
Multitasking on a phone? I know screens are getting bigger, but it seems like a bit much to me... I can understand this on a tablet, but having two windows that im interacting with at the same time on a phone would feel really cramped, unless its one of those fold phones that are 2 or 3 in 1
You plug in a USB-C cable with DP-Alt mode (or whatever phones use) and you have a (4K) display of any size, keyboard and mouse (via the USB hub in the monitor), and webcam, speakers, whatever else that's connected to your monitor/hub/docking station.
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?
So I tried to replace my personal computer with an iPad pro thinking that all I need is some basic apps + a browser. I connect it to a docking station and try to use it as a desktop computer, and I really love being able to take notes with a stylus.
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!
This is purely a UX issue, and there's no particular reason why iOS would even need to be more open to rectify it. They just need to improve the UX.
But, more broadly, the problem is that they can do it for their own apps, but for all the third party ones, it's down to app developers whether they want to put in effort to support keyboard & mouse/trackpad properly. And it's a chicken and egg thing there - relatively few users use it currently, so there's little motivation to add support, which deters more potential users.
Yes you are correct on both accounts. The problem is two different OS approach. What I need is an iPad hardware running macOS actially, with a tablet mode. Same issue with Chrome OS/Android separation.
Funnily enough Windows is the closest to get this right with 2-in-1 tablet/laptops. 2 problems with this: 1- Windows, 2- sub-par HW.
A secure device. Pixel with graphene and this thing lets you keep all your classified eggs in one basket, but it is a really hard to pry open basket. At home you can do stuff on it with the same comfort as on PC, but you can always have it in pocket.
I’m against smartphones. Sure, they’re a technological marvel, but they’re also incredibly dumb in practice. They’re built mainly for consumption, not creation. They feel like walled gardens that limit freedom and stifle creativity. The hardware might be amazing, but the software is awful. In the end, they mostly just make our kids dumber.
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.
This would be close to it. Google added a Linux VM to Android 15 QPR2. You can already try it on Pixel devices by enabling it through the developer options:
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.
Look at the ultra-compact form factor minipcs from e.g. beelink and gmktec. It's pretty much what you describe, and is an actual computer that you can run real operating systems like Linux on. The form factor is roughly 4" x 4" x 1.5", so fits in a pocket. On the low end, you can get an N150 with 8GB DDR4 for ~$125 on Amazon, which is still monstrously powerful for productive desktop use.
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).
Have you never heard of categories such as "gaming pcs" or "netbooks" whose name literally describes how people will consume using it. Laptops advertise how long you can consumes using it's battery life in terms of movies and music.
This is largely due to the popularity of full touchscreen smartphones compared to those in the past that had hardware keyboards (for example Blackberry and Palm Treo devices).
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).
Many of the comments here talking about how phone hardware is capable enough to run a desktop - thereby obviating the need for a separate desktop/laptop - are missing the fact that consumers actually want multiple devices. Also, no consumer electronics company ever makes a successful business model on selling less stuff that does the same thing.
There are real functional/usability reasons for having a separate device (with its own compute/storage) in a laptop form factor, and furthermore if we are honest, laptops are a kind of student/professional fashion accessory (especially Macs), a social-signal that you are a "knowledge-worker". As a result, that form factor is not going away anytime soon.
What Google are doing seems less about the "desktop mode" for Android (though that's a necessary technical step) than it is about having a unified consumer OS experience between Android and ChromeOS, which according to reports, they are planning to merge.
> thereby obviating the need for a separate desktop/laptop - are missing the fact that consumers actually want multiple devices
Do they? What I want is the power of the desktop available when I have access to it (SW & HW), but if the phone is powerful enough (maybe with a small accelerator box for dGPUs to handle gaming/AI), I’m not really seeing the value of multiple devices; it’s just more clutter and stuff to maintain (e.g. SW context, more HW things that can break & require repair, etc). I’m already using remote VSCode to always program on my home desktop computer regardless where I am because it’s easier than juggling clones across machines and forgetting to sync somewhere.
> Do they? What I want is the power of the desktop available when I have access to it (SW & HW), but if the phone is powerful enough (maybe with a small accelerator box for dGPUs to handle gaming/AI), I’m not really seeing the value of multiple devices
Isn't that "small accelerator box for dGPUs" another device? That seems like adding more complexity, not less.
Based on what you shared, I don't think you are representative of the majority of the consumer computing device market. There are real human factors (functional and social) that have resulted in the current laptop and desktop form-factors, and why many attempts to completely replace either have failed.
> I’m already using remote VSCode to always program on my home desktop computer regardless where I am ...
Are you doing your remote VSCode session on a phone? You must need at least a 13" laptop (or phone dock device with a screen/keyboard/battery) for that. At that point, why not just use a laptop, and avoid the complexity of plugging/syncing with a phone?
Sure. But so is the monitor. But it significantly lowers the cost of the experience since I don't need separate CPU+RAM+Motherboard for a desktop.
> There are real human factors (functional and social) that have resulted in the current laptop and desktop form-factors, and why many attempts to completely replace either have failed.
Sure, or maybe the lackluster SW for such an experience is the reason it's failed. No one cares about a desktop form factor. Laptops have clearly eaten that market except for enthusiasts and you clearly see this cannibolization attempt by all players. I don't think they'll stop just because you've declared they've failed because getting this right & winning is a huge advantage.
> Are you doing your remote VSCode session on a phone? You must need at least a 13" laptop (or phone dock device with a screen/keyboard/battery) for that. At that point, why not just use a laptop, and avoid the complexity of plugging/syncing with a phone?
I think you're just grossly misunderstanding what I'm saying. If I can plug my phone into a monitor + keyboard + mouse & the phone can run VSCode with all my extensions, the point of a laptop drastically disappears. Then when I'm done work I unplug my phone and go home. The point of avoiding a laptop is cost - I have a $3k laptop that's not providing any value over a monitor + keyboard + mouse especially when I already need the keyboard + mouse to do any coding. For that cost I could have two massive really nice displays and STILL be saving money. The coding is an extreme example but you can see how simpler versions of this, which is what Android and Samsung are building, can remove the need for many laptops that kids carry around - just put your laptop shell that's just a monitor + keyboard + mouse into your backpack, pull it out, connect your phone, and start taking notes. Moreover, in a corporate environment you can now have multiple people sharing the resources of 1 machine. In fact, many coding shops even just give you a VM to do all your work on with a thin client for the local UI.
> I think you're just grossly misunderstanding what I'm saying. If I can plug my phone into a monitor + keyboard + mouse & the phone can run VSCode with all my extensions, the point of a laptop drastically disappears.
In that case, you are tied to working in places that have a monitor + keyboard + mouse ready to plug into. Perhaps that isn't a problem for your work (or allows you to put needed boundaries around where you work), but there are many people who need to have an 11+" screen and keyboard in arbitrary places, like conference rooms, libraries, classrooms, job sites, etc.
> The point of avoiding a laptop is cost - I have a $3k laptop that's not providing any value over a monitor + keyboard + mouse especially when I already need the keyboard + mouse to do any coding.
I agree that a $3k laptop is overboard. Using a laptop like that for remote-desktop and web browsing has more to do with social-signaling. But it raises the question, did you buy the $3k laptop or did your employer? If it was your employer, is it your financial problem?
For my part, I do personal local development on an $800 laptop (a Chromebook) that works pretty great. If I were only using it for coding tasks with an external display and input devices like you describe, I bet I could just as well use a $200 laptop, but I do care about display quality in on-to-go use cases, so I spent more for a higher end display.
So I'm in full agreement that one should not throw away money at overpriced laptops, but the laptop form factor itself is still pretty indispensable for doing work in arbitrary places. Somehow, I don't see VR/AR goggles that Apple and Samsung are pushing replacing them any time soon.
As long as its primary/blessed development language remain Kotlin, the Android ecosystem will remain inaccessible to me. It's not that I can't learn Kotlin, but I don't want to. When I want to develop an application on my desktop, it boils down to just `g++ ...` it, if I chose to. That is to say, I don't need GBs worth of download and a blessed IDE and gluttonous build system (the abomination called Gradle) to make my application. So, Android spreading everywhere is not good news for me. It's OK on my phone - I only use it, not do much development on it. Well, I could have, but not with something I consider as reasonable effort.
Taking better advantage of a display is nice but imo the really exciting part of desktop mode is the planned integration with Google's Linux Terminal app (i.e. 1st party linux VM support). I have a Samsung DeX device and while you can get a basic dev environment working easily it can be really cumbersome to make it comfortable to use and integrate with your normal tablet workflow. Being able to install full-fat linux apps and run them in a window would be a complete game changer.
source for planned integration: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/392521081?utm_source=...
Chrome OS allowed this even before 2020. So you could open Linux (even GUI) and android app right next to each other... Had whole JS dev workflow/toolchain running on that ( did not want to clog my main computer with that ). Problem with mixing apps is that for some you have to use mouse/ stylus because their GUI was not meant to be touched.
Partially, it still has lots of issues that were never fixed.
https://chromeos.dev/en/linux
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-suppo...
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-library/guide...
Note specially the parts of WIP, missing features, to be yet done, and so on.
It's a shame that Chrome OS was subsumed by Android instead of the other way around. IMO in many ways it had better foundations.
> IMO in many ways it had better foundations
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.
Using android on a laptop with a keyboard and mousepad was always an awkward experience. It's kind of like trying to use an iPad as your main computing device. Similarly bad experience.
Hopefully they work on that.
Similar with a keyboard and mouse with Android TV - I thought it would be useful for YouTube searches etc, the UI is so ill adapted to keyboard I gave up.
It's always funny charging my phone off the USB C for my monitor, nudging my mouse and seeing a pointer appear on the screen though.
Dex is annoyingly close to being really useful.
I think Samsung recently added a "desktop Dex" mode that's supposed to be less mobile-ui. I haven't tried it tho.
> Dex is annoyingly close to being really useful.
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.
I just wish it would do 4K resolution out of the box.
The hardware can do it, it's just that the system settings won't show you the 4K resolution option for some reason. But you can do some hacks to make it appear and then it works just fine.
You need to install a nondescript app called 'Samsung Good Lock' from the Samsung store (not available in Play store), and use that to side-load an app called 'Multistar', which is an app to tweak display settings. From that side-loaded app you need to tap the 'I Samsung DeX' which does various setting changes to "Make Dex even more friendly", it doesn't specify what it does exactly, but it'll make the 4K resolution option appear in the system settings.
This all feels real sketchy and I don't understand why Samsung doesn't just enable 4K resolution officially, because the hardware is clearly capable of it.
With every OneUI update there are rumors that it'll natively support 4K, but so far that hasn't happened AFAIK. Admittedly I haven't used Dex in a while for myself, but judging from recent Reddit posts this hack is still needed.
Samsung's Good Lock is kind of their testing ground for new features.
It lets people who want to tinker do it, while keeping people who probably shouldn't tinker from doing it.
It's not available in the Google Play store because the play store rules are really stupid. A lot of apps aren't available there.
According to the Samsung Store it is developed by developer 'Good Lock Labs'. According to this Wikipedia source [0] they developed this app 'in cooperation with Samsung'. Browsing through the sources I did find a 2016 article from Samsung themselves [1] about Good Lock, indeed confirming it is theirs.
Also, it looks like Good Lock is now also available on the Google Play Store, and there it lists Samsung Electronics as the developer [2].
I guess this does make it less sketchy of an app to use, but it still feel wrong to have to do so many weird steps to get a menu option working.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Lock [1] https://news.samsung.com/global/make-your-galaxy-smartphone-... [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.an...
These instructions sound like a parody sketch about bad UX.
Aye, to some degree they are, but I'm also glad that android is open/hackable enough that goodlock lets you add these additional preferences. (I also use it, for me it was for ultrawide resolutions)
I remember when they presented the S10, with the initial implementation of Dex.
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
Just FYI, Dex is really fluid on flagship devices.
Reasonably fluid, but not when it comes to heavy web pages with a lot of 3D. I have an S24U I use in DeX for most of my day but when I do have to switch to my ten inch 6800u laptop it absolutely demolishes the DeX experience. There's still a fractional second of lag that Samsung hasn't done away with yet.
I think it was introduced with at least the S9+, mine has had DeX since I got it originally.
I have it on my old S8
This is the right answer. DeX itself was introduced with the S8 series.
With the S9 they introduced the developer test version of Linux on DeX but it never came to the S8 or S10 and it was already discontinued with the Android 10 update :(
It's not a full laptop replacement, but at least for me it's good enough at what it does that I can just take my phone or tablet with me on short vacations and not be paranoid that I'm gonna have to do something complicated like log into my bank or write some verbose emails that I'm normally afraid to do from my phone. In those instances, plugging one of them into a KVM and Dex mode is sufficient to get over the hump.
Last I used it, I still wouldn't want to write code on Dex. But it was great for everything else. I could definitely complete just about any other tasks I needed with it. It was a little clunky, but doable; teams calls, getting into internal tools for triaging systems issues, the company CRM, all that stuff.
Rumor is Samsung won't support Google's Linux Terminal (at least for their existing phones) since their Knox conflicts with the Android Virtualization Framework :-(.
Honestly I'd like to see Windows 11 running under this as well, but that seems incredibly unlikely.
It's interesting to hear because Samsung had a Linux feature previously: https://developer.samsung.com/sdp/blog/en/2017/10/18/samsung...
They had Linux on DeX in 2018, killed in 2019. It was a partnership with Canonical
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.
Maybe it's possible anyways? Qualcomm was able to integrate their own hypervisor on top of AVF
Linux Plumbers Conference 2025 | Adding Third-Party Hypervisor to Android Virtualization Framework
https://lpc.events/event/17/contributions/1447/attachments/1... https://youtu.be/hLdUCrlheKg
When I tried the external display mode on my Pixel 8a, I did some development with a bluetooth keyboard, bluetooth trackball and vscode tunneling into my desktop.
So the development wasn't local, but it was sort-of usable. (And the editing is local in any case.)
What do you mean by tunneling here; remote desktop or does vscode run on the 8a?
VSCode runs in Chrome on the Pixel 8a. But it connects to a remote VSCode server via a VSCode tunnel where eg your compiler runs. See https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/tunnels
I had no idea the vscode tunneling stuff worked in the browser. I thought it was SSH. Do they have some sort of WebSocket proxy? Do you have a link to how to set this up?
They offer both ssh and their own tunnel protocol.
So you start the 'server' on eg your desktop, and that registers with eg GitHub or Microsoft (or perhaps another service, not sure how open the system is), and then you can use any other computer to connect to your system via GitHub or Microsoft (as a proxy, I think). The other computer can either run just a browser, or can run a vscode (which is basically also a browser in the end).
See https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/tunnels
Yes, the nice thing about the tunnels is that the computer you want to develop on doesn't have to be reachable from the internet. It only has to be able to reach the internet. GitHub (or Microsoft) play the man-in-the-middle.
It's really convenient. I often use it to develop from my laptop on my desktop, even when they are on the same local network: because it's basically just as fast, but I don't have to worry about which network I'm on, it just always works (as long as I have Internet access on both machines. But if that ever stops, I'm not really going to develop much anyway.)
Plug for reddit.com/r/androidterminal !
This is instantly where my mind went as well.
I don't know. Google is always building lots of stuff and most of it gets shelved before it ever sees the light of day, and 75% of what does get released gets shuttered within 5 years.
The reality is if it isn't ads or ads adjacent, Google will lose interest. And based on their historical revenue I suppose they ought to continue with this model.
Google needs a widely used platform for AI integration into every computing task, based on interactions with and data on that device. Their best bet is to expand the reach of Android into traditional desktop tasks.
Android already made lots of progress on multi screens and adaptive layouts, and there is now a new developer center with guides for what they call productivity apps.
Not to mention, more people than we realize are on their phones. For those of us who use both a phone and computer, it is VERY easy to overlook.
For example, my wife, she is primarily on her phone as a computing device. Only recently after buying a Mac Mini and a Cricut is she back to using a standard computer. She might borrow my laptop for online shopping just so she can open 50 windows and 80 tabs to consume all available memory on my Macbook Air, but that's probably because Safari on iOS has sane tab caps.
I also know that games predominantly for PC / Web have become predominantly mobile over the years. There's a reason Roblox plays on your phone and tablet. You might not have the specs for a gaming machine, but your iPhone / iPad / Android definitely do.
I feel you on what you're saying, but Google's Chromebook business is _big_ (11.5 Billion in revenue 2024) and this seems like a way to pull together that with their Android development.
I wish they'd open-source what they're shuttering. Would be a win-win as far as I can tell.
How is it a win for Google to release something open-source that had potentially cost them lots of money? Even if they don't need and pursue it anymore, why would they just give it to the competition? It's always easily said to "just open-source" it but Google is a business and owes outside software developers nothing.
How can another company compete with a product Google no longer offers? There is no competition because Google quit competing.
If Google spins up a project and then abandons it, how could they possibly be harmed by someone else offering a comparable product? Google has already accepted a total loss on the product, there's really nothing for them to lose here.
What benefit do they see in exchange for the effort in open sourcing things?
It's certainly a win for the rest of us, but how does Google benefit to make it a "win-win", and not just a "win"?
> What benefit do they see in exchange for the effort in open sourcing things?
Goodwill and more people willing to try whatever they release next, rather than the current situation of “Oh, Google is releasing a new thing? Pass. They’ll just stop supporting it and I’ll be left in the cold anyway, so no bother even trying”.
Killing so many projects makes fewer people interested in trying whatever they release next, which means fewer users, which means a higher likelihood it’ll be abandoned. It’s a vicious cycle that could be stopped or even reversed if they open-sourced their abandoned stuff.
To be clear, I’m not necessarily advocating Google should do it or that it’s be a clear win with no downsides. Maybe the upside wouldn’t be worth it, but there is an upside.
I like and agree with your "open source as 'abandonment insurance'" angle here ...
> Goodwill and more people willing to try whatever they release next
When's the last time your (pick your favorite non-technical) relative cared if the product they were trying was open-source?
My point has nothing to do with licensing, but longevity.
What non-technical users know is “Google released a project, I invested my time in it, they abandoned it, and I was left hanging. This has happened multiple times so I no longer want to try anything new they release”.
Had the projects been open-sourced, at least some of them would have been picked up by others and continued so non-technical users would know “Google released a project, I invested my time in it, they abandoned it, then someone continued it and I’m still using it to this day. I’m happy to try this new Google thing, because even if they abandon it I won’t be left in the cold”.
> What benefit do they see in exchange for the effort in open sourcing things?
Next (good) thing they build will probably have greater adoption, due to less fear of "they'll kill this in two years anyway".
Lol, sibling commented same thing at the same time.
It's a win, because people will not fear Google shuttering their experiments, and thus will be more likely to use them. It's also a win, in that it furthers a common good: if Google abandons a venture, why would they be upset if someone picks it up and succeeds? It's also a win, in that it boosts the open-source community (or industry, whatever you want to call it), which is also a win-win. If you want to by cynical, it would also be a win in that you could spin a narrative about how Google's monopoly-fueled profits trickle-down via open-source projects and thus unregulated capitalism works.
If they did it would probably have to be rewritten as it probably depends on a ton of internal google systems.
You're right. I guess this illustrates a downside of closed-source and walled-gardens.
> The reality is if it isn't ads or ads adjacent, Google will lose interest.
Or unless it is a tool they need, like Gerrit.
If you haven't tried it, especially if your workplace allows your phone to have access to some corporate data, DeX + a good pair of AR or just integrated display glasses feels like the future.
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.
I tried it for a while with the best AR glasses I could find at the time, XReal Air 2 Pros with an Xreal Beam, and although I could see the potential, it wasn't good enough to get work done. The screen size was too small, the resolution too poor, and it was a little too jittery and unnatural feeling.
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?
Xreal One removed the biggest problems with that tech, it's usable now. No more "jittery and unnatural feeling" or stupid dongles/pucks. They put custom silicon in the glasses which stabilizes things and optionally locks displays in space.
It's not perfect but usable.
I'd say take another look. The beam has a LOT of issues. The One basically says "give me a signal, I'll project it in 2D and track it with 3DoF." Its smooth, and while it can drift a little (it is only an accelerometer), it is stable for me.
I wear glasses with mine, yet I still find it surprisingly crisp for text in ultra-wide mode. I'd say it is a fairly unobtrusive experience. It also helps that the nose pads don't dig into my skin.
That said, if a Quest Pro isn't good enough, I hesitate to recommend it. The FOV is certainly smaller on the One.
Thanks. If you have experience with the Quest Pro would you say the text clarity is a step up with the Ones? Supposedly the One Pros will be even better, and are coming out soon.
Yep, I do this too. It works well. I rather would have a Linux Desktop but for now I can get all my work done like this.
> Linux Desktop
This is exactly what Librem 5 phone offers. (My daily driver.)
How's the battery life? Have you tried it with XR glasses?
Didn't try the glasses. Concerning the battery, see these:
https://forums.puri.sm/t/nine-months-librem-5-as-my-only-pho...
https://forums.puri.sm/t/a-l5-review-1-week-to-my-ready-to-s...
I'm extremely interested in this use case. I can imagine a future where your employer ships a "company headset" and peripherals rather than a laptop.
Why don't we have virtual offices to wander around yet?
> Why don't we have virtual offices to wander around yet?
I worked at a place that used one.
Because the actually functionality they provide is the same as Slack, but worse in basically every way, is maybe why.
This is the problem. VR/AR can add value but you really have to tailor the experience to it. And it has to be a suitable usecase.
If you just lift over what you have in 2D it becomes only more painful. But this is what most people do. Also many platforms, like Microsoft Mesh. Yes, it's cool that you can join a teams meeting in VR. But until they add something that actually takes advantage of being in VR, all it does is add more friction. Roasting marshmallows and other cutesy minigames does not add any value whatsoever.
I think there’s maybe a case for VR meeting rooms that you kinda teleport into, but anything beyond that is gonna be niche as hell and just a hindrance in every other case. A whole VR office space? Just gets in the way.
And I expect even a VR meeting space would see more use that’s worse than a normal video call but is happening because someone in charge is over the moon for it, than it’d see use in the far rarer cases where it’s really better.
Well, I've done extensive trialling at work during the pandemic (when flying often just wasn't an option at all!) and I do see added value for things like workshops.
Teams has breakout rooms but they are very rigid. You have to switch to one and define them. You can't 'glance over' and see what the other rooms are doing. It's much more flexible to just walk around in a 3D space, work on a shared whiteboard you are standing around, pull in some powerpoints to discuss, and walk over to another group if you're needed (you could see them wave over). At this point it really becomes a real alternative to flying over for a workshop. Thus saving many tonnes of CO2, and much cost in flights and hotels. VR is not quite as good but it's much better at dynamic workshops than a simple video tool like Teams is. Added bonus if you are discussing potential upcoming products that you already have 3D models of. Just picking up a model and going like "Hey why don't we put the USB port on this side", this is really where this shines.
But the tool has to be really good. Other solutions like Arthur, Viverse and Spatial could do it really well (Spatial has since gone full consumer-oriented though and has lost many capabilities for business, it's now more of a luxury VRChat). Mesh can not, it is extremely limited. It's the old AltSpaceVR but dumbed down. It would have been better if they kept AltSpace as it was without messing so much with it.
Speed of light limitations there is fundamental latency that will be noticed if you are not close enough. Many musicians are doing virtual jam sessions and 1000km is about the limit. Music is the most demanding application, depending on how your meeting is run some can handle a lot of meetings. Someone on Mars will forever be limited to just watching a presentation, someone on a different continent will need to raise their hand and be recognized before asking a question.
That was what SimulaVR was advertising on. Unfortunately it seems things are a lot more difficult than they anticipated and they still have not shipped any devices.
Same with the Immersed Visor. Also still vaporware. They had lots of journalists fly over for a demo that didn't actually work and all they did was show off hardware.
What bluetooth keyboard do you use? I thinking I want to try this out :)
If you want a really small one I've been happy with this:
https://www.amazon.com/iClever-Bluetooth-Keyboard-Foldable-S...
Wouldn't recommend for extended typing though.
Thanks. Do you only connect Dex + XReal + Keyboard with no mouse? I'm worried no mouse will be uncomfortable.
I actually don't have any sort of Dex/AR setup. Currently only have my phone's screen. Admittedly I've only tested it. Haven't actually done a coding session yet. So total typing time on that keyboard is minimal. So I guess all I can say is I'm happy with the build quality and design. The bluetooth switching between devices is pretty slick.
I tried this and battery goes down very quickly on the phone. Do you have a solution for this?
Any usb-c docking station should work. (should being key, many are lacking something useful - commonly the monitor port is a usb-A video interface with windows-only drivers not a display port that would just work).
Though I suspect a laptop is still what you want. Your phone will generate too much heat to leave in your pocket. Or maybe some backpack (fanny pack?) wearable?
powerbank?
I meant for a pocketable setup as parent explained. You wear the glasses in a coffeeshop connected to your mobile phone (the single USB-C port).
Based on some quick testing this consumes about 1% per minute on my S24 Ultra which makes this scenario unrealistic (at least for me)
The issue with this is usually that you can't have power from the powerbank going into the only USB-C socket on the phone while the display signal comes out on the same cable. I think it's technically doable, but not usually with dongles that would fit in your pocket.
All the AR glasses vendors have a pocketable dongle for this.
I recently bought a second-hand Microsoft Surface tablet, installed Debian and now run GNOME on it. The first time it came up and I logged into a familiar GNOME environment was a profound experience. I was pretty sure what was going to happen, but it still took me by surprise.
So I don't think the convergence idea is necessarily bad. It's perhaps somewhat niche, and it's not easy to pull off.
I almost never use a phone, so for me the major selling point of my tablet is no Android oddities or second-rate citizen vibes. I don't need to wade through an app store to do simple things. I'm not depending on a hardware vendor where support stops a few years down the road. Plugin a keyboard and mouse, and it's just like any other computer with a really small screen. I already have a desktop computer, so it doesn't replace anything, but the familiarity is still nice.
The touch experience is not as polished as Android. It's fine for my purposes, though. I'm mostly using the tablet as a night-time reader for epubs - dark background, light level at minimum, and then it works surprisingly well for when I wake up and need something to do before I can fall asleep again.
Would love to read some blog about that, just in case you have.
Was this a Surface RT (very old ARM - Nvidia Tegra), Surface Pro (Intel), or Surface X (ARM - SQ1 / SQ2)?
this done well is a transformational thing, its just no one has been willing to invest yet, but the compute on a phone is now good enough to do most things most users do on desktop.
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.
The future of personal computing is being dictated by the economics of it, which are that the optimal route to extract value from consumers is to have walled-garden software systems gated by per-month subscription access and/or massive forced advertising. This leads to everything being in the cloud and only fairly thin clients running on user hardware. That gives the most control to the system owners and the least control to the user.
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've heard so many "The future of personal computing" statements that haven't come true, so I don't take much stock in them.
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.
> 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.)
We're almost there. The cool kids are already using 12" touchscreen ARM devices that people from 10 or 20 years ago would probably think of as tablets. Some kinds of work benefit greatly from a keyboard, but that doesn't necessarily mean you want oneall the time - I still think the future is either 360-fold laptops with a good tablet mode (indeed that's the present for me, my main machine is a HP Envy) or something like the MS Surface line with their detachable "keyboard cover".
> Some kinds of work benefit greatly from a keyboard, but that doesn't necessarily mean you want oneall the time
I would say most kinds of work.
Even if you're just on teams discussions - a real keyboard is much more productive than messing around on a touchscreen. Same with just reading. Sometimes I read a forum thread on my phone and then when I get back to the real computer I'm surprised how little I read and how much it felt like.
The only thing where I don't see this being the case is creative work like drawing where a tablet is really perfect, much better than a wacom or something.
Well, the MacBook Air is pretty much an iPad that swapped its touchscreen for a keyboard (and trackpad).
> I still think the future is either 360-fold laptops with a good tablet mode (indeed that's the present for me, my main machine is a HP Envy) or something like the MS Surface line with their detachable "keyboard cover".
I think people still want to use different form factors in the future. There's different uses for a phone, a tablet, a laptop and a desktop.
I do agree that laptops might get better tablet modes, but if you want to have a full-sized comfortable-ish keyboard, the laptop is gonna be more unwieldy than a dedicated tablet.
The only thing you save from running your desktop (or even laptop) form factor off your phone is the processor (CPU, GPU, RAM). You still have to pay for everything else. But even today the cost of desktop processing components that can reach phone-like performance is almost a rounding error; just because they have so much more space, cooling and power to play with.
(Destop CPUs can be quite pricey if you buy higher end ones, but they'll outclass phones by comical amounts. Phone performance is really, really cheap in a desktop.)
> I think people still want to use different form factors in the future. There's different uses for a phone, a tablet, a laptop and a desktop.
> The only thing you save from running your desktop (or even laptop) form factor off your phone is the processor (CPU, GPU, RAM). You still have to pay for everything else.
Having used the same device as my tablet/laptop/desktop for a few years (previously a couple of generations of Surface Book, now the Envy, in both cases with a dock set up on my desk), I never want to go back. It just makes using it so much smoother, even compared to having tab sync and what have you between multiple devices. It's not a money thing, it's a convenience thing, which is why I think it'll win out in the end.
I think as hardware continues to get thinner and lighter, the advantage of a tablet-only device compared to a tablet/laptop will disappear, and as touchscreens get cheaper, there'll be little point in laptop-only devices. I definitely still want an easy way to take a keyboard with my device on the train/plane, and I don't know what exact hardware arrangement will win out for that, but I'm confident that the convergence will happen. I think phone convergence will also happen eventually, for the same reason, but how that will actually work in terms of the physical form factor is anyone's guess.
> Having used the same device as my tablet/laptop/desktop for a few years (previously a couple of generations of Surface Book, now the Envy, in both cases with a dock set up on my desk), I never want to go back. It just makes using it so much smoother, even compared to having tab sync and what have you between multiple devices. It's not a money thing, it's a convenience thing, which is why I think it'll win out in the end.
Yes, that's useful. But eg ChromeOS already gives you most of that, and a bit of software could get you all the way there.
> I think as hardware continues to get thinner and lighter, the advantage of a tablet-only device compared to a tablet/laptop will disappear, and as touchscreens get cheaper, there'll be little point in laptop-only devices.
I agree with the latter, but not the former. There are mechanical limits to shrinking a keyboard, and still preserve comfort.
(And once you have the extra space from a keyboard, you might as well fill it up with more battery. But I'm not so sure about that compared to the argument about physical lower bounds on keyboard size.)
> eg ChromeOS already gives you most of that, and a bit of software could get you all the way there.
I don't understand what you mean here. If you're talking about some kind of easy sync between devices software, people have been trying to make that work for decades, but they not haven't succeeded but haven't even really made any progress.
> There are mechanical limits to shrinking a keyboard, and still preserve comfort.
Maybe, but those limits are plenty big enough for a tablet - particularly with the size of phones these days, a tablet smaller than say 10" is pointless, and the keyboards on 11" laptops are fine. Now making a device that can work as both a phone and a laptop-with-keyboard will probably require some mechanical innovation, yes, but that's the sort of thing that I suspect will be figured out sooner or later, e.g. we're already seeing various types of folding phones going through the development process.
11" laptops are not fine to type on all day unless you give them huge bezels (even the 11" macbook which did have those huge bezels was space-constrained on the less important keys). Ergonomics is really important.
Sure it's fine to get by for an hour or two but spending 8 hours 5 days a week on one is a really bad idea and will provide a great path to crippling RSI. In fact using any laptop that much is a bad idea, due to the bad posture it provides (with the screen attached to the keyboard). This is why docking stations are still so important.
> 11" laptops are not fine to type on all day unless you give them huge bezels (even the 11" macbook which did have those huge bezels was space-constrained on the less important keys). Ergonomics is really important.
Well, it depends on personal preferences.
I usually go for at least 15" in my laptops, but I can believe that other people would be fine with 11" for what they are doing.
The laptop / tablet hybrid is a valid form factor, and these systems are reasonably successful in the market.
Of course, that doesn't mean that they are the right device for everyone.
> (Someone who kept insisting on this finally admitted that they couldn't do a spreadsheet on a phone or tablet.)
I think that's to generative AI, I would expect people to gradually replace manually creating a spreadsheet with 'vibecoding' it.
> 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.
ChromeOS already works like that, when you log in on different devices, without having to physically lug one device around that you plug into different shells.
I know many people where that is exactly the case, not everyone is doing spreadsheets or coding.
Also I haven't owned a desktop since 2003, and my last one at work was in 2006, although we may debate laptops with docking station are also desktops.
In software development, "desktop" is synonymous with laptop.
Laptops + docking stations are usually just as fast as a desktop. You can buy $10,000 desktops that are much faster (50+ cores, and a lot of RAM), but most developers don't find them enough faster to be worth it. (in my benchmarks rebuilds with 40 cores finished faster than rebuilds using all 50, for a 10+million line C++ project) It is easier to have everything locally where you are. If like many of us you sometimes work from home remote into a different machine is always a bit painful.
Exactly, and that also makes Surface like devices good enough way to code on the go.
> (Someone who kept insisting on this finally admitted that they couldn't do a spreadsheet on a phone or tablet.)
Desktop LibreOffice works fine on my Librem 5 phone.
I think this is a really good take - Apple especially (but Google too) aren't gonna naturally invest time and resources into software that'll make you less likely to buy more of their hardware.
That said, market incentives can and do change pretty fast. Especially with climate change, and current tension in global supply chains, we could see a shift away from hardware caused by taxes or pirce hikes (I'm not saying we will though).
That'd be a game changer for how much companies might invest in changing what computing looks like.
> the compute on a phone is now good enough to do most things most users do on desktop.
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 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 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.)
Yes! I enjoy KDEConnect a lot for that :) With the phone being the computer, the latency can probably be made low enough that it just feels like a proper touchpad
> 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
Approximately no-one was watching 4k feature-length videos on their phones in 2005, or playing ray traced 3d games on their laptops.
Sending plain text messages is pretty much the same as back then, yes. But these days I'm also taking high resolution photos and videos and share those with others via my phone.
> I hope they'll also allow the phone's screen to be used like a trackpad.
Samsung's DeX already does that.
> 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.
Your own 'good enough' logic already suggests otherwise? Processors are still getting cheap and better, so why not just duplicate them? Instead of having a dumb large screen (and keyboard) that you plug your phone into, it's not much extra cost to add some processing power to that screen, and make it a full desktop pc.
If we are getting to 'thin client' world, it'll be because of 'cloud', not because of connecting to our phones. Even today, most of what people do on their desktops can be done in the browser. So we likely see more of that.
> Approximately no-one was watching 4k feature-length videos on their phones in 2005, or playing ray traced 3d games on their laptops.
Do people really do this now? Watching a movie on my phone is so suboptimal I'd only consider it if I really have no other option. Holding it up for 2 hours, being stuck with that tiny screen, brrr.
I can imagine doing it on a plane ride when I'm not really interested in the movie and am just doing it to waste some time. But when it's a movie I'm really looking forward to, I'd want to really experience it. A VR headset does help here but a mobile device doesn't.
you position it vertically against something in bed and keep it close enough (half a meter) so that its practically same size as tv which is 4-5 meters away and you enjoy the pixels. i love doing this few times a week when im going to sleep or just chilling
Hmm ok, for me a phone at 50cm is way smaller than a TV but mine is also not 5m away. In bed I usually use my meta quest in lie down mode.
We were watching videos and playing games on our laptops in 2005. Of course they mostly weren't 4K or raytraced, don't be silly.
The thin client world is one anticipating a world with fewer resources to make these excess chips. It's just a speculation of what things will look like when we can't sustain what is unsustainable.
> We were watching videos and playing games on our laptops in 2005. Of course they mostly weren't 4K or raytraced, don't be silly.
The video comment was about phones. The raytracing was about laptops.
Yes, laptops were capable of watching DVDs in 2005. (But they weren't capable of watching much YouTube, because YouTube was only started later that year. Streaming video was in its infancy.)
> It's just a speculation of what things will look like when we can't sustain what is unsustainable.
Huh? We are sitting on a giant ball of matter, and much of what's available in the crust is silicates. You mostly only need energy to turn rocks into computer chips. We get lots and lots of energy from the sun.
How is any of this unsustainable?
(And a few computer chips is all you save with the proposed approach. You still need to make just as many screens and batteries etc.)
Our disagreement is probably in the "mostly only need energy to turn rocks into computer chips". I think our economy is a lot more fragile and complicated than that. And that economy relies on non-renewable resources which are dwindling, in a world which is posed to offer less of its renewable resources, which includes people and their labor. (This is a compounded problem, since people and their labor are what would drive recycling, say, to extract gold from old chips.) And important knowledge (say, about how to make CPUs) is something that can be lost with just an unlucky coincidence, or something like another world war.
You don't need to imagine a total economic collapse. Take any resource that goes into a chip, and contrive any reason we'll have to consume significantly less of that resource. How do you solve that?
Well, we have highly-redundant compute-per-person. I personally have nine pretty capable computer chips to my person, just in the building I'm in. That's a lot, and that represents an excess in resource consumption. A phone-as-motherboard laptop solves one of those chips. If we make the same games we're making today but we go back a decade or two in graphics, then we can have fewer consoles and gaming PCs, too.
I'm not saying "one chip for many devices" is a panacea. There are other things we might do. Maybe laptops and phones can be made to have display input, for example.
> And that economy relies on non-renewable resources which are dwindling, [...]
We are sitting on a giant ball of matter. None of our resource use is actually using up material, we are just transforming matter.
We might be running out of resources that are cheap and easy to transform (eg cheap oil), but all of these are problems we can fix with enough energy. And eg solar power is going to provide more and more cheap energy. Fusion is also going to come to the rescue in a few decades (and we already had nuclear fission for ages.)
The economy is pretty resilient. Not even a global pandemic left all that much of a mark three years later.
> Take any resource that goes into a chip, and contrive any reason we'll have to consume significantly less of that resource. How do you solve that?
With substitution, economising and ingenuity. Eg early transistors were made of gallium, but we use silicon these days. That's a substitution.
> Well, we have highly-redundant compute-per-person. I personally have nine pretty capable computer chips to my person, just in the building I'm in. That's a lot, and that represents an excess in resource consumption.
Less than you'd think. These days, the main expense is for the power to run your chips, less so than the energy to make the chips. And having redundant chips around that aren't turned on doesn't cost any of the former.
> If we make the same games we're making today but we go back a decade or two in graphics, then we can have fewer consoles and gaming PCs, too.
Btw, that's one of the answers about what people would do in case of resource shortage for making chips.
> I'm not saying "one chip for many devices" is a panacea.
And I'm saying it would only save you a few chips, but wouldn't save you on batteries nor screens etc.
(And even a 'dumb' screen needs quite a few chips these days.) Hey, even Apple's chargers have more powerful chips in them these days than their first stand alone computers a few decades ago had.
---
Btw, you can economise on powerful chips even more, if you do most of the heavy computing in the cloud: even your combined phone/laptop/desktop chip would still be idle most of the time. The cloud can eg use one million chips for three million people. That's even better than one chip for one person (which you touted as better than nine computers for one person.)
I think ultimately, we disagree about whether or not it's inevitable that we end up having an economy that can transform sunlight into a perpetual recycling machine. I think that's not inevitable, especially in a scenario where we're left dealing with a climate collapse.
Having 'target display mode' on laptops and whatnot is one way that would save the chips that go into screens, which is why I mentioned it above. I agree that computing in the cloud can also reduce the number of chips used (although that does rely on chips to keep the internet going, etc.)
> I think that's not inevitable, especially in a scenario where we're left dealing with a climate collapse.
A 'climate collapse' is extremely unlikely. Look at studies on the (prospected) economic impacts of climate change. Wikipedia has an article on it, for example.
In any case, the forecasts expect something like perhaps 20% total reduction in GDP over say the next 100 years compared to the scenario without global warning. (But that's on top of our regularly scheduled single-digit percent per year regular economic growth.)
20% is a huge impact! It's bigger than Brexit. But it's also only about as big as the per capita gap between the US and the UK. And the UK is far from a collapsed nation.
And: in case you want to mention that the economy ain't everything. Yes, I totally agree. That's why my argument works in reverse: the economy can only function when the environment hasn't totally collapsed. Thus if leading experts project around a 20%-ish reduction in GDP, that means that the don't project a collapse in the environment.
As a sanity check: financial markets also don't seem to expect a collapse of the global economy anytime soon.
Last time I used DeX you phone does become a TouchPad for the desktop when plugged to a monitor
Yes it can, it can also become a keyboard in fact.
One thing I'm kinda missing is that it doesn't seem to be able to become both at the same time on a system that has the screen space for that. Like a tablet or Z Fold series.
:D I avoid Samsung products but I'm happy that at least exists. I hope it's not patented, and Google is both able to put the same thing into Android, and that it's available in AOSP
This concept has been floating around for a long time. I think Motorola was pitching it in 2012, and I'm sure confidential concepts in the same vein have been tried in the labs of most of the big players.
> 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.
I don't see that at all.
That's because I think over time the processing power of a eg laptop will become a small fraction of its costs (both in terms of buying and in terms of power).
The laptop form factor is pretty good for having a portable keyboard, pointing device and biggish screen together. Outsourcing the compute to a phone still leaves you with the need for keyboard, pointing device and screen. You only save on the processor, which is going to be a smaller and smaller part.
> 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.
Even in your scenario, most of your devices will be idle most of the time anyway. And they don't use any energy when turned off. So you are only saving the cost to acquire the processor itself.
Desktop computer processors that can hit the computing power of a mobile processor are really, really cheap already today.
You are ignoring data location and software installs.
Having all your data always with you stored locally (on your phone) is simpler than syncing and more private than cloud.
One OS with all your software. No need to install same app multiple times on different devices. Don't need to deal with questions like, for how many devices is my license valid for. However, apps would need to come with a reactive UI. No more separate mobile and desktop versions.
Example, you take a photos on your phone, dock it at your desk or laptop shell, and edit them comfortably on a big screen, with an app you bought and installed once. No internet connection is required.
A docking station could be more than just display and input devices. It could contain storage for backing up your data from the phone. Or powerful CPU and GPU for extended compute power (you would still use OS and apps/games on your phone with computations being delegated to more powerful HW).
This could replicate many things cloud offers today (excluding collaboration). No need to deal with an online account for your personal stuff. IMO, it would probably be less mystical than cloud to most users.
> Having all your data always with you stored locally (on your phone) is simpler than syncing and more private than cloud.
You need to sync it anyway. Having that phone with you all day also means exposing it to a lot of risk involving theft, drops and other kind of damage. You need that sync for backup purposes.
I agree actually having it on the phone is great though. I use DeX a LOT, it's a great way of working when I don't have my laptop with me but do have a docking station available (e.g. at the office when I forget my laptop or just dropped in unplanned)
> You need that sync for backup purposes.
Backup is a simple one way sync, but like you said, it is needed. It could still be private, if backup to another of your devices is made when your phone connects to your home WiFi.
You can (in principle) back of over the cloud and still have everything private. Encryption and open source software can handle that. (You want the software to be open source, so you can check that it's really end-to-end encrypted without a backdoor.)
Of course, that scenario would only become the norm, if there's mainstream demand for that. By and large, there ain't.
> You are ignoring data location and software installs.
Caching works well for that.
> Having all your data always with you stored locally (on your phone) is simpler than syncing and more private than cloud.
Have a look at how GMail handles this. It has my emails cached locally on my devices so I can read them offline (and can also compose and hit-the-send-key when offfline), but GMail also does intelligent syncing behind the scenes. It just works.
> Example, you take a photos on your phone, dock it at your desk or laptop shell, and edit them comfortably on a big screen, with an app you bought and installed once. No internet connection is required.
My devices are online all the time anyway.
> A docking station could be more than just display and input devices. It could contain storage for backing up your data from the phone.
I'm already backing up to the Cloud automatically. And Google handles all the messy details, even if my house burns down.
> Or powerful CPU and GPU for extended compute power (you would still use OS and apps/games on your phone with computations being delegated to more powerful HW).
How is that different from the ChromeOS scenario, apart from that the syncing in your case doesn't involve the cloud?
> This could replicate many things cloud offers today (excluding collaboration). No need to deal with an online account for your personal stuff. IMO, it would probably be less mystical than cloud to most users.
No, it would be more annoying, because I couldn't just log in anywhere in the world, and get access to my data. And I would have to manually bring devices in contact to sync them.
You can build what you are suggesting. And some people (like you!) will like it. But customers by-and-large don't want it.
Cache invalidation is hard. Offline-first is also hard and expensive to develop. Single source of truth + backup is simpler.
> No, it would be more annoying, because I couldn't just log in anywhere in the world, and get access to my data. And I would have to manually bring devices in contact to sync them.
You are traveling without your phone? I don't always have an unlimited internet when traveling. If you loose your phone while traveling there's a good chance you won't be able to log in due to 2FA anyway. Devices just have to connect to the same local network to sync. Phone probably connects to your WiFi automatically when you come home. Syncing over internet is also possible.
I'm just saying it could be done. Not that everybody would use it or like it. Although, I imagine getting rid of one dependency (cloud) and having more control would be a plus to some.
Cloud is not magically without issues. People do get locked out their cloud account due to some heuristics flagging it, payment issues, user errors or even political reasons. And it can take a very long time before you get it resolved. Last year there was even a story on HN about Google Cloud accidentally deleting customer's account and deleting all their data.
> But customers by-and-large don't want it.
Do you have any data backing this up?
Phone centered solution could be more cost effective. A casual user would only need a phone, a backup solution (either cloud based or an external drive connected to a network) and a bigger display with input devices (portable or desktop). Possibly one less subscription they have to pay and lower HW costs.
> Cache invalidation is hard. Offline-first is also hard and expensive to develop. Single source of truth + backup is simpler.
Yes, cache invalidation isn't trivial. But it's a software problem that you can solve (for your particular application, or with a library for many similar applications) with enormous economies of scale.
> I'm just saying it could be done. Not that everybody would use it or like it. Although, I imagine getting rid of one dependency (cloud) and having more control would be a plus to some.
Ok, no objection there. Yes, some people would like this.
My point is that cloud first, and local caching that lets you work offline (like what you get with GMail and Google Docs) works well enough for most people, that there's probably not enough market share left over for your offline-first dream to get the economics of scale.
Though it's probably still more than possible in the same way that running your desktop on Linux was feasible from the 1990s onwards: at times a bit clunky, but if you are willing to put up with it, totally doable. Been there, done that.
> Phone centered solution could be more cost effective. A casual user would only need a phone, a backup solution (either cloud based or an external drive connected to a network) and a bigger display with input devices (portable or desktop). Possibly one less subscription they have to pay and lower HW costs.
If you need an external display anyway (and a battery, if you want a laptop form factor), adding a bit of compute power to turn it into essentially a ChromeBook is close enough to free. You don't even need that much computing power, because instead of offloading the computation onto your phone (like your scenario), you offload the heavy lifting into the cloud (basically our real world right now for most people).
The HW costs aren't that much lower, because low performance chips are already pretty cheap.
I agree there's an overlap.
> But it's a software problem that you can solve ... with enormous economies of scale.
Can be a problem for software that doesn't have such economies of scale.
Cloud is cheap for very basic usage, but costs can increase noticeably when workload increases.
Regarding UX. Some things work better in the cloud while some tasks are not so well suited for the cloud (e.g. latency sensitive tasks, task that require non trivial amount of data transfer between the user and the could).
I have no idea how many casual users would be affected by one or more of these things, if any. Phone centered user could still use cloud for some things. Maybe there would be enough interest, if polished solution becomes available. It could be you are right, I don't really know.
A laptop wins everytime because I don't have to carry around all my peripherals and set em all up again. Unless there's going to be dock setups in every conference room, coffee shop, table in my house, airplane, car, deck, etc, a laptop makes more sense.
The peripherals need not be anything more than a clamshell screen + keyboard, same as a laptop.
Than what do you save? Only the system-on-a-chip (CPU, GPU, RAM).
And the hardware to get an SoC with phone-like performance in a laptop or desktop form factor is relatively cheap, just because you have so much more space and power and cooling to work with.
(Your laptop-shell definitely needs its own power supply, whether that be a battery or a cable, because the screen alone will take more power than your phone's battery can provide for any sustained period of use.)
Right but if it's the same as a laptop why not just use a laptop?
The only things I can think of are you really want to keep all the data on your phone and don't want to use cloud sync solutions (Dropbox etc.), or you really want to save a couple of hundred dollars getting a (probably terrible) laptop without a motherboard. Not very compelling IMO.
Surely long term it'd be cost? A screen and a keyboard in a laptop shell should be a lot cheaper that a screen, a keyboard, RAM, SSD, fans etc in a laptop shell.
Those other parts of the laptop are cheap though. Sure not free, but chromebooks can be had new for just a few hundred $$$ (they don't need a fan either). If you want a fast laptop you need to spend a lot of money, but a fast laptop has the ability to have better RAM, SSDs and such than your phone because there is more space in that form factor and so if you want fast you are back to laptop while if you don't need fast your laptop is cheap.
Ease of use and clamshell should be cheaper if vendor would promise 10 years of support so clamshell bought today would still work with iPhone 22.
Those would be the most expensive parts of the laptop. You're basically just saving on a mobile SoC which isn't much of a cost.
this done well is a transformational thing, its just no one has been willing to invest yet
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.
AIUI, the main problem in the cell phone era is that by the time you create a notebook shell with an even halfway-decent screen, keyboard, battery, and the other things you'd want in your shell, it's hard to sell it next to the thing right next to it that is all that, but they also stuck a cheap computer in it (and is therefore no longer a dock). Yeah, it's $50 more expensive, but it looks way more than $50 more useful.
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.
BTW you don't even need a dock if you have a USB-C monitor with USB and audio ports, which is not that uncommon. The monitor acts like a USB hub, so if you plug in your keyboard and mouse that's your computer essentially
At least for the monitors I've used this way, they don't provide enough power over USB-C to keep my phone charged.
> 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.
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-...
I had one of these Atrix and laptop docks. It was really good, but sadly way ahead of its time. The desktop was a Debian-based Linux desktop and you could install various ARM packages. Unfortunately, the phone just wasn't powerful enough at the time. The touchpad was also not brilliant compared to Macs (probably better than Windows touchpads of the time). I sold it on ebay to a guy who plugged his Raspberry Pi into it, since the Atrix dock used mini HDMI and microUSB connectors. This has obviously been replaced in the modern age with USB-C.
I am pretty sure that modern phones are more than powerful enough! My wife's iPhone 16 Pro Max would be amazingly useful if not limited by iOS (which always feels like it's hiding true capabilities behind an Etch-A-Sketch interface to me). If you could plug the iPhone in and run a macOS desktop (which hasn't really changed for 15+ years), that'd be great. Thanks in advance.
I have a POCO F7 Ultra which is powerful enough to run LLMs via PocketPal and could easily replace my daily laptop or PC for work if it wasn't scuppered by USB2 on the USB-C port. If I could easily run ollama on the phone via a web interface I would because it's faster than my main PC for LLMs I think!
On Android you can go into Developer settings and force enable the ability to use desktop mode but sadly I can't without proper display support on the USB C.
I had an Atrix 2 that I was excited could work with a laptop-form dock. I never bothered to actually get the dock, though.
> 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.
There have been multiple attempts at this over the years.
https://liliputing.com/5-laptop-docks-that-let-you-use-a-sma...
I think power was a real problem. A 2010 phone was bit as close to a laptop in performance.
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.
> but the screen was always the annoyance factor.
Agreed. For this reason I'm quite excited about glasses like the Xreal One Pro. Having to carry around with me just my phone, a pair of glasses and a lightweight Bluetooth keyboard would be a game changer for me in terms of ergonomics.
Do you have this yet? I wonder how well it works in practice. I know some people using it with DeX but they're pretty expensive (around $400 I think) so I didn't try it myself.
No, not yet. I'm waiting for reviews of the Xreal One Pro to come out.
I remember there was a fad I think in 2009 or 2010 where a bunch of Android manufacturers released 'laptops' (just a display and keyboard) with a dock connector in the back that was meant to turn the phone into a laptop basically
Obviously the trend didn't take off
> but the compute on a phone is now good enough to do most things most users do on desktop.
The compute power yes, but the OSs and UX are shit.
Well, they are a generation ahead in many perspective than desktop UIs, so.
E.g. android/ios has better security than Windows/GNU Linux/MacOS, much more reliable suspend/wake functionality, much better battery management, etc.
Like it's a 50/50 chance my laptop with Win 11 will wake up fully charged or fully discharged in the morning, and whether it will be kind enough to actually be ready for work, or I can go brew a coffee before it's ready..
Since Windows has started this iteration of their move to ARM, I wondered if Microsoft would be the first to do this properly, by building an adaptable/mobile Desktop/UX to Windows 12 (or 13), pumping up the Microsoft Store, and then relaunching the Windows (Surface, I guess) Phone with full fat Windows on it.
In a way it's the same strategy that Nintendo used to re-gain a strong position in gaming (including the lucrative Home Console market where they'd fallen to a distant last place) - drafting their dominance in Handheld into Home Console by merging the two.
Windows Phone had this ability, it was called Continuum: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...
Also Ubuntu phone had it and it worked well. Better than on the phone itself due to lack of good small-screen-capable software.
I strongly agree, and have felt this way for a long time. We are being sold many processors, each placed into their own device. The reality is our phone processor could be used to run our TVs, streaming devices, monitors, VR glasses, consoles, laptops, etc. That's less profitable, however.
With cables, yes. And LG did that for a while in fact, they had a VR headset that would plug into the phone: https://www.cnet.com/reviews/lg-360-vr-review/ It wasn't a success but this was more software-related and also some hardware-skimping. It was a good idea, it just seems like the devs forgot to actually try using it before declaring it a finished product.
But wireless the lag is so bad that it's not really usable. Like Wireless DeX. Definitely not good enough for processor-less VR glasses (even the wireless VR streaming from meta does require significant processing power on the glasses end).
> this done well is a transformational thing, its just no one has been willing to invest yet
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19328085
To be clear, compute on a phone has been good enough for what most people do on a desktop for a long long time. That is not at all a new thing.
There's no need to stop there, why not just generalize that already to the WEF-approved "there's not a great reason for an individual to own anything"
in a sense apple is already doing this, since there's shared chip tech in the laptops and phones.
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.
Apple is intentionally hampering the desktop experience on the iPad and is very late in brining Stage Manager to the iPhone (the rumor is now iOS 19). Until there is serious competition (this and/or improvements to DeX, Apple will drag their feet because they want to sell you three compute device categories (or four if you count the Vision Pro).
Also, stage manager is not a good way of doing real work. It's with good reason that people abhor it on the Mac. On an iPad with no better alternative it's workable but not great.
So true! I have experimented with plugging an iPad Pro into an Apple 7K Studio Monitor with keyboard and an Apple Trackpad and Stage Manager: close to being generally useful, but I also get the idea that Apple is purposely holding back to prevent reducing Mac sales.
That is why I am rooting for Samsung DeX and what Google is offering: Samsung and Google can make money for their own reasons making a universal personal digital device.
They have the hardware. They don’t provide ANY software for this kind of thing though. And there is a very real chance it could cannibalize some Mac sales.
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.
True! Apple’s already ahead with the shared chip setup between Macs and iPhones. But yeah, for real work, nothing beats a proper laptop — big screen, keyboard, good speakers. I’ve tried using a phone with accessories too… not the same vibe. Maybe foldables will change that someday!
A desktop then, or a laptop plugged into a proper screen, real speakers etc. A laptop is still a compromise.
This is the only natural path if mobile chips are going to keep getting faster, everyone with a flagship phone is "wasting" so much good compute resources that never gets utilized.
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 :)
> everyone with a flagship phone is "wasting" so much good compute resources
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.
At least here, everyone I know and see does 'phone calls' with whatsapp and ear buds; I never see anyone holding a phone to their ears or using the GSM network to call actual numbers and I see a lot of people. Also, most prefer text chat anyway. This includes my 80+ parents. I wouldn't need a calling sim if not for sms from some vital services for quite a few years now. It being docked or not makes no difference for that; I wouldn't notice if my phone didn't have built in speakers: for calls we use bluetooth headphones, for music a Bluetooth speaker.
I travel a lot and do not like carrying things, so xreal and phone are more than enough for coding while going day long, easily augmented with a small power bank (unlike a laptop), with all of that fitting in my pockets after I drop my luggage at the hotel. Most my colleagues have macbooks and while they have good battery life, it is no comparison: the search for places with power outlets starts when I am not even at 50%. It is not an apples to apples as I do a lot of compute in the cloud, but even with that on the laptops, they still last a lot shorter and you cannot plug in normal power banks.
Do you actually work on the xreal like this, in DeX? I really wonder what it's like. They're so expensive it's hard to invest in one (I don't have America-level purchasing power)
Yes, it works very well. The new ones are better, but I have the Air 2 and they work very well for this, no need for taking my laptop anywhere anymore.
If people waste fancy silicon on phones, yes very much. While people use browsers and apps they're hardly multitasking like you would with a modern computer. A lot of good horsepower left for more advanced use cases.
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.
> If people waste fancy silicon on phones, yes very much.
The silicon only has to be fancy, because phones are so constraint in terms of space, power and cooling.
Getting phone-like performance in a desktop or laptop form factor and power and cooling budget is a lot simpler and cheaper.
> They don't have to buy a new device but can still get a mouse/keyboard/display combo and so some "productivity tasks".
The point was that they do have to buy a new device. The only thing they don't have to buy is new silicon. But that's trivial compared to everything else.
Thanks for your in-depth simplification of thermal budgets and updating me on the hardness of buying processes silicon? How do you know what the person I replied to mean when I don't?
You are welcome, I guess.
The original Samsung DeX dock for the S8 was exactly that. USB-C and had a fan in the stand to keep the phone cool.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/samsung-dex-first-impre...
Yes I have several of those and they still work with my S23. Not sure why they don't sell them anymore. It was a great idea. The fan is even dynamic, it knows how hot the phone is (even if it's in a case so the phone must be reporting it over USB somehow).
There was a second version which was flat so you could use the phone as touchpad. But it was thick, lacked ethernet port so it wasn't really worth it IMO. When you use a dock it's trivial to use a mouse, way better than any touchpad.
> If they nail the Linux container UX as well as ChromeOS … >Imagine thst a large userbase could just skip the laptop and desktop in favor of a USB-C dock and a decent display :)
Yeah - I don’t think the user base interested in container UX is “large” in relation to the mobile world.
Also, who wants to carry around a display with its own battery, a keyboard with its own batteries, a mouse/trackpad (batteries) and cables for the above? At some point it’s honestly easier to just grab a MacBook Air and walk out the door.
Umm no, the mouse/keyboard/display combo would be something you have at work and maybe at home... I'm not suggesting people start hauling 27" displays for shits and giggles, computing from a phone doesn't seem that fun.
And I don't know, the container UX people didn't exist for ChromeOS before ChromeOS made it easy to run Linux apps that way so.
Scrcpy recently added support for Virtual Display. This allows connecting your phone at any resolution e.g. 1920x1080. But vanilla android by default does not have a taskbar in that mode.
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...
https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy/issues/6032
I've tried it. I was pretty impressed. I plugged in a USB-C hub with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor and everything worked immediately, even the Windows key on the keyboard.
Android has supported basic peripherals and screen mirroring for a decade at least, and several vendors have tried to bring plug-in phones to the market as desktop alternatives. The fact people still find out about this feature today shows how badly the feature was marketed. Samsung Dex is good enough for 90% of office work these days, if not more. For a short time you could even run fully-fledged Ubuntu through DeX, which would've made the phone a full desktop replacement.
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..
> Android has supported basic peripherals and screen mirroring for a decade at least
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.
Yes, I recently tried it with the Pixel 8a. It sort-of works. And fortunately, it doesn't just mirror the screen, but lets you extend it.
LG phones had a pretty good "desktop mode" that activated when you plugged it into a big screen.
Sadly like many of their great features it was not well known....
Yeah LG had some really great idea and actually went through with them into actual product (kudos for taking the risk there). But they were horribly bad at selling them, in many cases at the execution of the idea, and also at continued support. This automatically shifted some great ideas into the worthless gimmick category :(
I always thought that MS will make something like that. Android phone with "business" app store and docking support for external screen and peripherals. IIRC one of the last windows phones was from HP with dock support. I guess after the windows phone they just gave up.... There was an attempt at making dual screen ms android phone which was a failure (at least from business perspective).
Well, MS did make that, sort of.
https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/6/9464639/microsoft-windows...
Yes the problem with continuum was just the huge lack of ARM-capable windows software at the time. I think it would have fared a lot better today.
> My phone is more than powerful enough to act as a travel laptop, yet its potential is constrained by a small touch screen..
In case glasses are an option, I heard that Xreal glasses can be hooked up to Android phones directly. Such a setup with a proper Android desktop mode (or even better: a Linux VM with all one's dotfiles and everything) would be fantastic IMO.
I mean, what I really want is chromebook shaped shell that I slot my phone into for travel with an extended external battery.
sadly that "windows" key is what i dont like on Android
I use Moonlight to remote to my desktop. Moonlight on Windows can capture Windows key(and some other shortcut like alt-tab) and redirect to remote machine.
Moonlight on Android can't do that, the dev this is Android issue and can't do anything about it.
This is the thing that bummed me out the most about Microsoft exiting the phone market.
I know Windows isn’t super popular around here, but the idea of carrying one device that I can just dock to work on always intrigued me.
There’s just no way this is taking off with any significant market share in the business world anytime soon being android only, and Apple will never adopt it because they want you to buy 3 different devices. Such a great concept, and with the performance of mobile chips getting so good, very viable.
The problem with this idea is that it's unattainable.
Let's start with something simpler: a living room. There's no universal design that would fit just any living room. The layout and the set of furniture that would work for my living room will not work for yours. Size, shape, windows, doors, connection to other spaces - everything matters. If you want a great design for your living room, you literally need to start from your specific living room.
There's a great idea -- why don't we come with a resizable (reflowable?) design that could fit any living room in the world? While this idea might be entertaining for an engineer's mind, it doesn't work in practice, unless you can settle for just a mediocre design.
Also, being intellectually honest, we need to attack the strongest Apple we can imagine, not a weak Apple that's easy for us to attack. And that strongest Apple will never adopt this idea because they aim to design the best computer/phone/tablet that they can, and in order to design that they need to start with the computer/phone/tablet.
The idea of a phone connecting to a display/keyboard/mouse and becoming a computer has the problem that you could either optimize your design for what you have with a phone, or for what you have with a display and peripherals. It will never be as good as the system designed from the ground up to be just a single thing. It's always nice to have options, but there won't be any mass adoption for the mediocre combo. It was dead in the water with Palm Foleo in 2007, it's just as dead in the water 18 years later.
> could either optimize your design for what you have with a phone, or for what you have with a display and peripherals. It will never be as good as the system designed from the ground up to be just a single thing.
This conclusion looks unsubstantiated to me when you speak of the modern devices that have a sufficient performance for most typical tasks. You probably can't design a gaming computer+phone but nothing prevents you from making a GNU/Linux phone able to work with different desktop environments depending in its current mode. Indeed PureOS and Mobian operating systems already offer that and work well on my smartphone (Librem 5).
Not talking about what's possible or impossible, just not seeing it gaining any significant market traction.
Modern pentathlon is a sport where athletes ("pentathletes") compete across five different events. Even the best of them would be mediocre at best at any specific event competing against athletes who have trained for that specific event.
> just not seeing it gaining any significant market traction
There can be a lot of reasons for that, like the duopoly forces preventing the competition (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21656355) or insufficient PR.
> Even the best of them would be mediocre at best at any specific event competing against athletes who have trained for that specific event.
In computing, if you have a general-purpose device, it usually can do most tasks sufficiently well.
> duopoly forces preventing the competition
Aka "malice".
> or insufficient PR
Aka "stupidity".
While I love Hanlon's razor as much as anyone, I love Occam's razor even more. And the simple explanation for that is that people don't like to use a mediocre combo when they could be using several purpose-built devices which excel at a specific job.
I like to go around with my Leatherman, but when I have a real job I get my toolbox out instead.
> it usually can do most tasks sufficiently well
An RV could do many "car tasks" sufficiently well, and it can do many "home tasks" sufficiently well, too. And while it has its place, it can't compete against the car + home combo, which is why most people have cars and homes but not RVs.
> > or insufficient PR > > Aka "stupidity". > > While I love Hanlon's razor as much as anyone
Stupidity isn't necessary here. A small company simply has no resources for a large PR campaign.
Also, nothing prevents a performant iPhone from allowing a full desktop mode except artificial software restrictions resulted from the greediness. Follow the money.
> I like to go around with my Leatherman
This is exactly what we're asking for. We don't want to get rid of our tablets and laptops. But we want leatherman-level functionality from our phones.
That's perfectly fine. You can get it today from Samsung, or maybe soon from Google. My argument is that Leatherman is not going to sell anywhere remotely to the level of the combination of purpose-made tools that it seems to incorporate. You're welcome to disagree.
> You can get it today from Samsung, or maybe soon from Google.
No, you can't. There's no usable desktop software that you can run there. Artificial restrictions will stay, although might be slightly relaxed.
Well, maybe Librem will make one, and sell it in the billions, who knows.
It's been already created, albeit it's less powerful than than the mainstream phones. Librem 5 is my daily driver.
I'm not so sure about unattainable. Many programs exist that serve the user in very different contexts, for example responsive websites, web apps. Or games that work on console, like Steam Deck, and PC. Or the Nintendo Switch, which can be used in handheld mode, with a small screen and battery, or docked, connected to a TV. Controllers attached or unattached.
Now, I can see problems too: docked and portable modes need very different performance optimizations. But I'm sure that software can handle this, for example, IDEA IntelliJ has power save mode, and OS-es also demonstrated that they are fine on portable and connected systems alike, like MacOS, Windows, Linux.
It's also not a problem that some things are not available in both modes. For example, Switch has games that explicitly need docked mode, for example, Super Mario Party. Yet both the game, and the platform is popular.
I see no reason why a phone couldn't be a mediocre, or better PC.
A phone could be a mediocre PC. In my opinion, it will not gain any significant market share competing against other PCs -- mediocre ones, good ones, great ones, and "insanely great" ones too.
I can imagine a scenario when it's really useful, when portability is concerned. This segment right now is served by web apps, which essentially give the same end result, supposing a working internet connection: the user can have the same software and the same files on multiple systems, like a phone, and a PC. The device itself being portable would be the same, but infinitely more private: all the apps and files could live locally. Now, I don't know how large that market is, and I suspect that it's not that large, given that people are just fine with cloud based solutions.
In another words, I think that the functionality itself is very useful. It's just that it's currently being served somewhat adequately by cloud based solutions. For this reason, such a phone-pc product could not offer much in terms of functionality, and so, it might not be popular at all.
I don't think we can fairly compare a phone pretending to be a desktop against other desktops.
It would be more fair to compare a phone that has desktop features, to a phone that doesn't have desktop features.
So let's compare the best Apple phone that refuses to have a dex like experience; to a Samsung that has had a dex experience for about 10 years, or to a Google phone that is now adopting desktop experiences.
If the future is anything like the past, in 5 to 10 years from now we'll see a desktop experience on iPhone and they're going to be snobby about it.
Most people have a car, not an RV. And when these people chose theirs, was it "fair" comparing a car that cannot sleep 4-6 people to an RV that can?
You don't have to degrade the phone experience at all. Just add a Linux VM that it switches to when I plug it into a monitor and has access to my files and we're good.
To me, something along these lines is by far the best approach. Under Android, a Linux desktop could be virtualized on top of Android’s Linux kernel and under iOS, a macOS userland could be virtualized on top of iOS’ Darwin underpinnings.
It’s the only way you don’t end up compromising either half of the experience too much. Trying to converge both into a single UI as Microsoft previously did with Windows and GNOME is now trying to do now is a recipe for failure.
All the plumbing is all there[0].
Here's hoping they hook it up so we can use it.
[0]: https://www.androidpolice.com/android-15-linux-terminal-app/
I'm sorry but I remain unconvinced.
Do you have any examples of desktop UI interfaces that are impossible to create in a Dex like experience, that is possible on Linux, Mac, and Windows desktop experiences?
Or is it that mobile apps will never work great/ideally on desktop? And if that's the case, how is that worse than not having them at all?
Maybe there is a scenario I'm not seeing here.
> that are impossible to create
My argument is not "this is impossible to create", my argument is "in my opinion this will not succeed in competition against purposefully-made devices." You're welcome to disagree, of course.
> There's no universal design that would fit just any living room.
Yes. This is why any furniture store that thinks that they can just offer three designs which would cover 90% of people is going to inevitably fail, as evidenced by Ikea. It's a ridiculous idea that same three designs could be adapted to living rooms across one country, let alone entire globe.
Oh wait. Half of the word's population uses the Bestå cabinets and Nordviken chairs.
While Windows RT / Windows 8 were largely panned, I think they had a lot of potential.
RT / 8 went very hard towards touch interfaces. Then 8.1 made a lot of course corrections to re-establish what's good about mouse + keyboard on Windows.
But... RT was abandoned alongside Windows Phone 7 / 8 and Windows 10 Mobile, and Windows 10 focused on mouse-keyboard once again without nearly as much thought about touch.
I really think this was one case where persistence would have paid off. A focus on "Windows everywhere" instead of (or alongside) "Microsoft apps that all exclusively push cloud services everywhere" could've put Microsoft in a position of mobile and convertible device dominance.
Editing to add, I was just reminded of the Surface Duo -- Android based. (And the announced but abandoned Surface Neo...) Another odd moment I'd describe as... "oh wait let's go back and try our old strategy but without any of the advantages of Windows app support on mobile!"
Worked more than one year on Dex years ago. Developed a million-user website with Tmux.
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.
These days, I would just use a vscode tunnel from Android to develop on a real computer, but edit locally.
I've done that with my Pixel 8a connected to external screen and input devices. Works ok.
I have been using code-server (openvscode-server will also do) to run on a remote powerful machine and then connect to it from lesser devices (a phone in desktop mode would be good if I could do it!) via a VPN. Keeps all the source code remote.
The idea of a unified computer, resembles also with the idea when iPhone merged, calculator, mp3 player and phone.
With ubuntu's try a decade ago, https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge#/ it was obvious there is a market for this. But the ecosystem chain beats it all. Everyone will wait for their favorite OS to catchup.
Pretty sure Windows Phone did this over a decade ago. I mean, say what you want about Windows Phones, but yeah, this was a thing.
It was called "Continuum" and was introduced with Windows 10 Mobile. Worked pretty smoothly but it couldn't run win32 application only the new modern UWP apps. Introduced 6 Oct 2015 alongside the Nokia Lumia 950/950 XL. Discontinued when Windows 10 Mobile reached end of support in Dec 2019.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Continuum
I remember when MS was pushing UWP apps hard. So many things needlessly handicapped. I'm glad they seem to have kinda given up on that now.
UWP was limited because it was the subset that could run on PC, Xbox, Phone, and HoloLens. Being able to make one responsive app and deploy it across that ecosystem was pretty awesome.
But when you kill the non-PC platforms, you're just left with a reduced capability version of windows apps
I'm not aware of any Windows Phone implementation like this that existed commercially. Can you point me to it?
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.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G
The HP Elite x3 had it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Elite_x3 . The phone came with a docking cradle with desktop ports.
It did. I have the 950xl and the display dock. At the time, it was such an awesome feature that the world and how we work was not ready for yet. https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Display-Dock-Lumia-HD-500/d...
Freaking cool. I don't know how I missed/forgot this, having been so immersed in the Windows Phone world. Thanks!
I feel like this is something that could spur Windows/Windows Phone adoption in modern times.
Display connectors were a problem back then. Now you can just use USB C.
They did. The lumia had this feature. It also had a liquid cooling system. But the windows computer was quite limited. This was before they migrated to windows one core.
As someone who likely never would have bought a windows phone, I sure wish Microsoft would have stuck with it
I switched from a lifetime of iPhones to an android phone last year, just because of folding phones. They are amazing and IMO the reason why Apple is going to have issues as these get cheaper (unless they release a folding phone too). Now that I have all this screen estate the current UI feels limiting often.
Rumors are Apple will be inventing the folding phone in a year or two.
Haha yeah, I’ve heard that too! Apple might be late to the foldable party, but you know how they do it — show up last and still steal the spotlight. If they really launch one, it’ll probably be super refined… and super pricey. Let’s see if they can change the game like they did with the notch!
I am pretty skeptical that I would like the size but I’m certainly interested in seeing what they come up with.
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.
The size: its a smaller phone that becomes a tablet on demand. It really is the best of both worlds
But is it? That’s what has me wondering.
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.
> 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?
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.
I couldn't even read your post because it doesn't make sense to me. Just go in a store and try the phone.
Your hands still pay for the full weight all the time.
https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_z_fold6-13147.php
https://www.gsmarena.com/apple_iphone_16_pro_max-13123.php Ah, yes, the whole 12g difference!Both of these are crazy heavy by my standards. The Nexus 5 was a great phone at 130g.
To each their own.
I'm fine with a heavier ones. And looking at the amounts of iPhones sold (including cases, holders and whatever) the weight isn't a factor for the many.
Its actually much easier to hold a folding phone! I often just use it in unfolded mode because it's so easy to hold
It's not like Apple hasn't had the ability to release a folding phone since the display technology has existed for years. The tricky part of releasing a folding phone is figuring out how you're going to handle the incredibly high warranty claim rate when screens spontaneously fail.
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.
Google pixel folding is great quality, I think you're talking about the first gen folding phones.
In addition Apple would be happy if people started upgrading their phones more frequently.
How does this relates to the submission's "Desktop View"? Genuinely trying to find the connection.
The desktop view is for larger screens, it is somewhat similar to fordable phones.
The screen of foldable phones is still smaller than most tablets, and there’s a reason iPads offer something like Stage Manager for (larger) external screens (disregarding for the moment its janky implementation). Meaning, the screen size of foldable phones doesn’t change that much about the usefulness of being able to connect to a desktop-size screen.
I have the huwai xt fold, folds out to a 10.3 inch screen. I remote to a windows 11 computer and can do full development on it with a folding keyboard with builtin trackpad
Isn't harmonyOS supposed to be a fully convergent operating system too? I have no perspective on how the device works though, I've been very interested does it run that? Will it have Linux containers?
That's great, but still hugely different from working on a 24"/27"/32" desktop monitor.
I've come to my senses since but it is quite enjoyable to use MANY monitors. One with the website, one with the css, some article about css, mdn, youtube, mail, irc, etc. A single giant display is also something entirely different.
It at least has similar down sides -.-
I switched from iPhone to android a month ago and it was so awful that I just went back to using my old phone. I treat the android device as essentially a powerbank with a camera, and even that it's bad at. plug it into my PC to transfer pictures? no response
Smells like user error and bias.
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.
>The only folks who ever have problems are people who need to be told how to use their devices.
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.
you p much repeated what i said. you want to be told how to use your phone. you'll use the apps that you're given to do the tasks they decide you can do on your phone. that's fine. that's why stock ios exists.
but the person i was replying to was acting like android doesn't work. They were trying to do things that their chosen walled-garden(apple/ios) prevents them from doing, then blaming anything but their walled-garden. they were showing clear bias.
>you p much repeated what i said. you want to be told how to use your phone. you'll use the apps that you're given to do the tasks they decide you can do on your phone. that's fine.
No, I have said entirely different thing.
Try to climb off you horse and maybe you will notice the difference between "apps you are given" and "apps I decided to use that are available on the market".
>but the person i was replying to was acting like android doesn't work
Well, that person was too emotional and given us almost no details. But to be honest the way Android behaves (unless you want to hack most of it) - it can be described as "doesn't work" from iOS user's perspective. And no, not because of "walled garden" or some other bs you imagine. Most of the time android phones (yes, even top models) simply lag (or start lagging over the time). Not to mention that the base line quality of software is simply lower than on iOS.
>they were showing clear bias.
And so are you. You are doing _exactly_ the same when writting things like "walled-garden" and "you want to be told"
get your head out of your own arse. it's got fuck all to do with needing to be told what to do; you should see the level of customisation I have set up on my laptop. the overriding issue here is that if you're doing things on your phone that require massive customisability then you're doing something wrong. phones are for calling, photos, music and occasionally looking something up. almost anything else you should be doing with a keyboard and mouse. a phone that you have to constantly dig through the settings and install a million utility apps to make bearable is a bad phone. a phone you have to pay a grifter to transition you to using is a bad phone
>Idk how something can barely work as a camera/powerbank unless user error is present.
I literally explained this in the comment. the device doesn't connect to my laptop when I plug it in, meaning that I can't transfer photos off it easily
your entire comment smells viciously of "oh my god! how dare he not have had a good experience with android. my poor baby android..."
if I was biased I wouldn't have bought an android in the first place
you're clearly using it wrong and blaming the device.
multiple people have explained to you that you're the issue and your response is to get angry, throw around insults, and reiterate that you're using it wrong.
you bought into a walled garden, then acting like everything outside your self-imposed garden is wrong.
it's telling that you've not actually addressed anything I said. you're just repeating yourself and appealing to the authority of others. you've quite clearly decided that Android is your "team" and you're just going to aggressively defend it and insult anyone who threatens that, and yes, you too were throwing around insults, just because they were less explicit does not mean you get to play as if you're the adult in the room
there's a difference between liking a walled garden and preferring a phone that just works pleasantly with all the features you need straight out of the box, and the fact that you're choosing to misunderstand this shows that you're just completely unobjective. and of course you are, you've literally explained your vested interest in this. it's like trying to argue atheism to an evangelical priest
besides, if we were talking about tablets or laptops or anything that you might actually want to do work on, then a walled garden is a huge issue, a massive dealbreaker. but as far as I'm concerned you're kidding yourself if you think your phone needs a wider pool of features than a Nokia from 2007
Is your PC a Mac? Apple doesn't support MTP because they want iPhones to look good or something. Every other OS with a reasonably complete Desktop Environment will allow mounting an Android device as what appears pretty much as a standard USB drive. It's part of why I prefer Android. Using an iPhone on Linux/BSD is just not worth the hassle.
> mounting an Android device as what appears pretty much as a standard USB drive
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.
They're talking about MTP, which is supported by every modern (and old) Android device AFAIK. It's not exactly a USB Mass Storage device, but as long as you're not on a Mac, it behaves basically the same as one.
Ah, I was mistaken. I thought they were saying that the reason Apple supports MTP (as opposed to UMS) is not that they want to make iPhones look good, but for some other unspecified reason (which I assumed was patent licensing). But they were actually saying that Apple does not even support MTP.
I think it’s more that MTP is an awful protocol than anything else. It’s slow and flaky even under OSes that support it. It’s shocking to me that with all of the brilliant people working for Google, nobody has managed to figure out a better replacement.
Maybe I've just been extraordinarily lucky but it's been nether of those things for me. It's also far superior to Apple's go through iTunes/Finder garbage protocol IMO.
Not saying that Apple has anything better, but I really don’t feel like the problem is adequately solved on Android either.
The easiest thing in my mind would be to use USB mass storage, with the storage presented to the connected computer being virtualized with a layer reconciling changes with actual storage on the fly (which the current MTP implementation already does anyway), solving the problem that USB mass storage traditionally has arising from two systems mounting the same chunk of disk at once.
That would work everywhere and remove the need for a bizarre protocol borrowed from Windows XP.
>Is your PC a Mac?
certainly not
I have been an iPhone user since 2009, but take 'Android-excursions' every few years. I am currently using a Pixel 9 and I can't see why it would be worse than an iPhone. Functionality-wise they are pretty much on-par. Sure, there are some differences, Pixels have much better AI functionality, iPhones better Mac integration. But I don't see a clear advantage of either, except that Android hardware is much more affordable (you can pick up a still pretty-ok Pixel 8a new for 379 Euro here currently) and Android has more customizability (but good out-of-the-box defaults).
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.
Curious to know what phone you got. A Pixel 9 with GrapheneOS is so much better than any iOS devices from my experience. But since users you have more freedom on Android, this will depend on what you do with it (e.g me, I use Syncthing to locally sync all my files and photos with several devices -- no cloud / subscription needed).
well it's not a Pixel, so no GrapheneOS for me. I will try syncthing though
> plug it into my PC to transfer pictures
In 2025? I got my first Android phone, what, 15 years ago and I've never transferred files over USB because why would I.
I want my photos on my laptop. why would I go to the trouble of messing around trying to find an app, installing it on both devices, trusting some additional third party with my photos when I can just plug it in and transfer?
There's lots of different Android phones. Some of them work better for some people than others.
Why would you want to plug in if you can sync them over Wi-Fi using Syncthing?
why would I sync them using an app I need to install on both devices, an additional third party I have to deal with, when there's zero technological reason I shouldn't be able to literally just plug it in with its charging cable? it's just overcomplicating matters
I just tried syncthing, and first of all I do not trust the fork of the app present on the app store, second of all, christ is it slow. why would I ever rely on this when I should be able to just use a usb cable? it's like trying to say that you should just screen mirror all your content to your TV rather than use a HDMI. bizarre
skills issue for sure
is it a skill issue that it doesn't just plug and play into my laptop? is it a skill issue that swiping from the left goes back to the previous page and swiping from the right also goes back to the previous page? is it a skill issue that google translate requires me to have the google search app installed? and that the google search app puts a big fuck off search bar in the middle of my home screen, of which the only simple way to remove is to delete the app?
> just plug and play into my laptop?
Yes. It literally protects your precious photos from being stolen if you plug your phone somewhere else, but the only thing you need to pull down the notification bar and tap to allow the file transfer.
Like it notifies you when you plug it in, if you didn't notice it even once - how can it be not a skill issue?
> is it a skill issue that swiping from the left goes back to the previous page and swiping from the right also goes back to the previous page
... in what app? If this is Chrome then ask Google why. Or install Firefox, DuckDuckGo or whatever else.
> is it a skill issue that google translate requires me to have the google search app installed
Yes, Google tries to stick it's d** everywhere. Just like Apple, though you don't talk shit about Greatest Jobs' Company, because you like it.
BTW, I have an official Google Translate app and I don't have the Search bullshit on the home screen. I literally have nothing except DDG and Camera shortcuts. Android 12, Moto G8. Because you know, you can disable apps.
this entire comment is a skill issue
by plug and play I obviously wasn't referring to the laptop just offering up my photos unlocked. I was talking about plugging it in, unlocking the device and nothing happening. there is no notification, and nothing in the notification bar. this would never happen on an iPhone. this should have been very obvious to anyone paying even the slightest attention
>... in what app? If this is Chrome then ask Google why. Or install Firefox, DuckDuckGo or whatever else.
in every app. it's a feature of the system, just like you can swipe from the side of the screen in almost every app on iOS. why on earth would I have said it if it was just in one app? again, this should have been very obvious to you
>Just like Apple, though you don't talk shit about Greatest Jobs' Company, because you like it.
what is with all this Android white-knighting? it's an operating system, not a protected species. I literally chose to buy an Android phone when I could have bought an iPhone, and somehow I'm biased? I could not care less about this pathetic semi-religious Android vs Apple war that you've got going on inside your head. they're not sports teams, they're tools, and unless you've got a very very specific use case, this tool's main feature should be the rapid, pleasant usability of a few simple features. they should not require concerted effort and research to set up. there are major issues with Apple, and there are major issues with Google, but for what I want in a phone, Apple makes a better OS. for what I want in a laptop, Apple makes a terrible OS.
>Android 12, Moto G8
you're 2 versions of Android behind what I have and you expect to speak as an authority on this?
> unlocking the device and nothing happening. there is no notification, and nothing in the notification bar
Except there is a notification for the USB mode.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
And it is this way since 2+ for sure.
> in every app. it's a feature of the system, just like you can swipe from the side of the screen in almost every app on iOS. why on earth would I have said it if it was just in one app? again, this should have been very obvious to you
No, it's not obvious for me. None of my Android phones behaved so and I don't think I can remember such behaviour on any other I saw or used.
> I literally chose to buy an Android phone when I could have bought an iPhone, and somehow I'm biased?
Yes, you are. You somehow equate your personal experience with the one unknown model and make to all Android phones ever. And despite people telling you what you are clearly missing something - you stubbornly insist it's not you but the Android.
> you're 2 versions of Android behind what I have and you expect to speak as an authority on this?
And my daily driver is Moto G54, Android 14. Any other pathetic excuses?
Plug it into my pc?
What is this 1995?
Re-posting this at top level, curious what others think.
Since Windows has started this iteration of their move to ARM, I wondered if Microsoft would be the first to do this properly, by building an adaptable/mobile Desktop/UX to Windows 12 (or 13), pumping up the Microsoft Store, and then relaunching the Windows (Surface, I guess) Phone with full fat Windows on it.
In a way it's the same strategy that Nintendo used to re-gain a strong position in gaming (including the lucrative Home Console market where they'd fallen to a distant last place) - drafting their dominance in Handheld into Home Console by merging the two.
I think it would end up exactly like the last time they tried that with the mobile-oriented Windows 8. Nothing has changed since then that would make an attempt any easier. Windows has far too much legacy cruft and everything's spread across a dozen different GUI toolkits and design languages. They still haven't even managed to completely eliminate Control Panel after 13 years of trying.
I think the bigger issue will be sabotage from Google just like last time. Who would use a phone without google maps or YouTube?
It's worse even than the "vital apps" ecosystem - who would leave their preferred "walled garden" when so many dials have been set to make that the maximum frustration?
Microsoft has built Android app support into Windows, and phobe hardware is a lot more powerful than it used to be.
If they really try to make a convergent Windows phone, I think they could make it if they manage to integrate Android apps into the Windows mobile UI. However, we are talking about Microsoft, so I doubt they'd actually manage to do it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Continuum
> I wondered if Microsoft would...do this properly
No.
Why do people want Microsoft to dominate?
This is baffling to read
At this point I want a choice other than Apple and Google/Samsung (Samsung phones with google software is the most common combination in that eco system. The more choices people have the more all of the above have to play nice.
This is very good news. Especially in light of recent attention given to the possibility of CPU shortages. Lots of programming tasks can be done comfortably on a smartphone. For example, no build front end programming. The description "desktop view" is unfortunate since it calls to mind a browser mode where the site is displayed as it would be on a desktop. And this is something completely different. I do hope this mode does not require an external display because it would be quite useful even with the phone's native display. Especially given their hypixel density and the availability of reading glasses.
I’m not sure I follow on the cpu shortage front. Phone cpus by their nature are attached to a degrading-over-time battery, and are much more power constrained… I have an already 6 year old i7 in my desktop… it can keep up with modern software still in a “I don’t even think about it” manner, which is to say I cranks through anything other than a large numerical simulation (dang Intel, I would have needed to go to an i9 to get AVX-512 back then I think).
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.
> This is very good news. Especially in light of recent attention given to the possibility of CPU shortages.
Who's having a CPU shortage? You know, factories can produce more CPUs?
Phones also have CPUs, JFYI.
They could be implying it would help with shortages by making it so that the CPUs already in phones are better utilized, decreasing the demand for new CPUs.
I don't see what else they could mean, really
Important to me: is that part of AOSP, or is that part of the proprietary Google stuff?
When I first saw samsung, I was sure we would soon see a world where laptops were obsolete bc you would just plug your phone into some dock attached to a keyboard, mouse, and display, and that would be your workflow.
I am surprised it never came to fruition. I guess its more profitable for manufacturers to push you to get a range of devices in all form factors (macbook + ipad + iphone).
>more profitable
Or, most people keep essentially no important data on their devices (everything is in clouds) so there is no need to manually sync data between a person's devices, eliminating the main benefit to having fewer devices.
Every year or so I've been toying with the idea of a thin client dev environment. Smallest possible device that can run Linux (or a RDP client) and support being plugged in to a single USB-C dock cable (display, usb for keyboard/mouse and power).
Maybe this is the answer? Even though I don't need the screen, the footprint of a smartphone is smaller than almost all SBC supporting the above requirements.
I had a project related to this in a big telco about 10 years ago. We used Citrix because a lot of apps were not native (yet).
Women in tech loved the concept: instead of carrying a laptop they could use the medium-size tablet we provided and have a wireless mouse and keyboard both at the office and at home. We also provided a monitor for both home and the office.
The project didn't lauch commercially because in our tests the microusb to micro-hdmi cables caused a lot of issues and management decided against it.
> Even though I don't need the screen
The screen could be used as a touchpad
None of the mobile Linux distribution is working on this, even though it should be easier for them to fallback to a DE than for Android to invent a new one.
Ubuntu Touch has this feature
>Use it as a desktop PC
> Connect your device to a monitor or TV, and it expands into a windowed desktop. Productivity like on a traditional PC.
Ubuntu Touch is not that usable as, say, a dev machine, cannot run docker for example.
Wish they would just adapt a full-featured Linux distro.
It seems to me the only difference between a phone with an extra screen, and a laptop with a SIM card, is the relative balance of power been the user and the vendor (Android restricts user capabilities for the benefit of Google).
How do we get back to the place where people expect a computer to have any number of peripherals, and be under the control of the user...?
https://plasma-mobile.org Does seem decent but the problem no major phone maker support it or make phones for it, in fact even linux desktop doesn't have may laptops/desktops "official" support,
I have been waiting for this to go mainstream for nearly six years now.
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.
My main issue with Android as a daily driver for desktop computing is the input latency. Even in high end devices, it's noticeable when typing and very noticeable for things like Alt-Tab and other desktop shortcuts. I wonder if this is fixable or if this is inherent to Android's architecture.
I noticed on lesser devices that their word-wrapping algorithm is very very slow, so inputting a large block of text in a native Android text box got slower and slower and slower and slower.
So who'll create a useable fold-up Fresnel-lens cover to turn that high-res high-dpi phone screen into something resembling a smallish monitor? I run Termux and sometimes Linux deploy on Android devices which turn these into fairly close equivalents to general-purpose pocket computers but even for my good eyes a somewhat bigger screen size at the native resolution would be preferable. Double the apparent size, keep the resolution and you'll get a perfectly useable 12" monitor.
I really look forward to desktop experience on Android tablets.
For personal use, 2-in-1 (laptop+tablet) conceptually makes a lot of sense. But I think 2-in-1 laptops go the wrong way -- they are full laptops with bad tablet experiences (because of weight, or desktop-first Windows OS). But I want a good tablet in 80% of time. If Android have reasonably good desktop support (e.g., keyboard, mouse, window management), a tablet with a detachable keyboard will be enough to cover the rest 20% of use cases where I want a laptop.
Agreed, mostly. I've still some issues regarding the "you won't have root on your device" thing. However, if the whole stack is open-source and included in stock Android and appears in GOS, it will make me less wary of jumping to it.
PS: currently using Tuxedo 2-in-1!
Kind of reminds me of my dream in 2001 (although at that time, the core device was a Palm Pilot, not a phone): I want something that I can carry in my pocket and use anywhere, but I can also sit at a desk and connect to a display, keyboard and mouse (I’d prefer a trackpad now) and have a full computing experience. 24 years later and we’re slowly creeping towards that dream. I had hoped that the fact that iOS was based on MacOS meant that the iPhone was going to get there sooner rather than later, but not so much.
Finally! This is just shy of being 10 years late though. Lots of people would basically stop buying laptops with something like this on their phones (and that's why Apple will never do it)
I don't think 10 years ago phone CPUs were close to desktop in terms of single-core performance, but thanks to Intel now they are
> Google Is Catching Up to Samsung DeX
Does anyone use DeX?
I use what I call “pseudo DeX” on my Galaxy Tab S8+ constantly. It’s basically the entire DeX laptop like UI without the requirement to use an external monitor (there’s an actual name for it I can’t remember).
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.
Funny you mention stage manager, i remember the absolute online letdown/meltdown that happened when it didn't ship with the iPadOS version it was scheduled to. The other day i encountered the button for it and completely forgot it existed, but after launching it, I remembered how useless it is.
What should have been is MacOS on ipad. Even the ipad has the same CPU.
I used it fairly regularly with a device called NexDock, which is essentially just a laptop shell that acts as a screen, a keyboard, a track pad, and a battery for a USB-C connected device. I mostly used it for web browsing, chatting, and Termux (usually SSHing into another system, but not always).
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.
Of course. Yet it's still a fraction of userbase.
I chose Motorola for the same reason (they have their own variant of dex which works smooth).
Yes! Have been using it since my first pair of 'AR' glasses when I want to get work done anywhere without dragging my laptop (corp or personal). If I ever find a folding bluetooth keyboard that can "lock" to remain stable in my lap, I'll be particularly happy.
I do sometimes. If I go to a friend's house with a big-screen TV and stereo, I can connect my USB-C dock, plug in the hdmi cable, and control from a mouse or the phone. Nice big display with multiple windows. Same for when I stay at hotels. I believe you can still get phones that have an HDMI out that's not DeX, but then you just see a scrunched up mobile phone display on a big-screen TV and no multiple windows.
It does seem odd to have what is pretty much a laptop and then plug your phone into it. Granted I have wanted this feature for a while/what I messed around with when I had my PinePhone Pro eg. running VS Code on it and I can't remember if I got a VM running on it or not. I've done it with an old 4GB ram Chromebook using GalliumOS.
I will say I probably didn't get a VM running on the PPP.
I could be remembering incorrectly, but wasn't this also a thing back in the Droid Bionic days? I remember being super thrilled at the idea of using my phone on a bigger external screen as another linux computer or TV screen.
Back in 2011 the Atrix could support a desktop mode with a dock, but not simply by plugging in a USB cable.
There was also a Motorola Ready mode which I experienced briefly on a Moto G that I bought but returned because the screen was horrid mush! (Not all Moto G, some had nice screens, but that particular one was a lower resolution, slow LCD screen with a lot of ghosting.)
But if I remember, Ready isn't really a standalone thing. It's more like what Microsoft Phone Link does - e.g. running your phone "desktop" but on another computer. But I think I'm remembering wrong... so maybe newer ones are a bit more like this - https://www.tomsguide.com/news/i-spent-a-few-days-with-motor...
I will never use Android on the desktop as long as Play Integrity is a thing.
Is this an AI-generated article? Article about novel UI with no screenshots??
It's weird. Android Authority already released a small article some days ago, with video, screenshots, and IIRC showing the way to enable it on the Android 16 preview [0]
Thanks for that. I hadn't seen a nexdock before.
The article seems to just repeat the first couple of sentences over and over.
Really hopeful this is the next frontier for mobile. Pair this with wider Field of view at glasses and a compact keyboard, and you can have a full it desktop environment in your pocket
Once again, goggle catches up with linux features from 10 years ago.
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.
This is a concept that seems to be ressucted from time to time... The first I remember was Motorola Atrix, launched in 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G
And yet Android was used by billions of people without a desktop mode existing. Ubuntu Touch is behind in the core things users actually value.
> Ubuntu Touch is behind in the core things users actually value
Indeed, the primary "core thing" missing is being manufactured and dictated to "the market" by a multi-billion $ monopoly...
Canonical is (currently) a multi billion company and there is not a monopoly in phone manufacturers
The clock and notification area are still at top doesn't make sense. These should move to taskbar in desktop mode.
I've been using BlueStacks X to run android apps on desktop. Seems to work okay.
So you install BlueStacks X on any monitor or screen, and then plug it in via USB-C, and you don't need a computer?
I am hearing about Google developing a desktop mode for probably 10 years now.
I'll just stick to Dex which has been available since forever until Google finally figures their shit out.
Remind me about Fuchsia in 3 years
Welcome to ChromeOS 2.0
Yeah that's what immediately came to mind. This must be part of their effort to merge Chrome OS into Android. On the Chrome OS side they already said are going to be replacing the kennel and other system stuff with Androids guts.
That's sad news. ChromeOS is much faster and more efficient than Android. Turning off the Android subsystem in low-end Chromebooks is a huge performance boost, even when no Android apps are open.
To be fair, that’s likely because the Android subsystem is a virtual machine - not running multiple sets of system services / CPU emulation on a computer will make it faster pretty much universally.
It's not just the virtualization, ChromeOS has had a lot of work put into performance. The low-end ARM Chromebooks use the same hardware as budget Android devices, and they're noticeably faster. My Android phone uses more RAM doing nothing from a fresh boot than those Chromebooks even have.
That’s a good point actually. Windowed app performance on Android apps is especially bad since they’re not designed for it (most of my experience is on Android-x86, but window resizing performance is not great)
Yup, the android vm is too much for a chrome pc unless it’s a high end device.
I can’t imagine android going faster than chrome at a native level either.
Breaks my heart (worked on Android from 2016-2023, ChromeOS was a revelation. Alas, Efficiency™. (as in salaries, not the things we build))
I suspect there is going to be an amalgamation between ChromeOS, Android and Fuchsia.
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.
What’s the point of running fuschia on android? It should be the other way around: android vm on fuschia.
Fuchsia as the core makes much more sense. It replaces Linux for a start and completely changes the security model to something a LOT more defendable among a bunch of other benefits.
I worked on Android at Google until 2023 and can 99.999% confirm for you Fuchsia, as the outside understands it is DOA. (i.e. as some sort of next gen OS, and if not that, some kernel that's on track to replace Linux in Android)
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.
Thanks for that insight. Obviously there’s a lot of context in there that isn’t at all clear outside.
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.
You're seeing the public facing side of it as a wholesale Android replacement, think of this repo as the tip of the iceberg: well, it used to be, but the rest of the iceberg disappeared.
It's still shipping, successfully, on millions(?) of devices yearly via Nest Hubs and such. Never say never. But all public-facing signs are fairly clear, the big move is ChromeOS into Android, not Android onto Fuchsia - and note how invested Google is in the Nest Hubs (read: not at all, languished for years now)
(I'm also curious if we could get a stats-based thing on, say, 2019 vs. 2024, My out-of-thin-air prior would be 30% more activity in 2019 than now. But I also figured there was 10 commits a day now, not 100.)
(I tried checking out the whole repo, but then all the apps on my macbook informed me en masse there was 0 disk space left :X Doesn't look like there's a GitHub mirror)
(cheers btw, you're my kind of people, one of the more soul-sucking parts of Google was finding out that kind of person is few, and far between) (i.e. curious and into It, not just here to make your boss or partner happy)
I guess that’s the thing, when I now look at the commits it’s way past what’s reasonable for nest. I see chromium is rolled back in for example, flutter is back in there, everything seems to be getting the bazel treatment, I see a bunch of non publicly announced releases this year… like things are clearly happening on some level in a way that’s not entirely consistent with the idea of a product that is in the midst of a death roll.
Do you think it’s possible that thinking evolved slightly beyond the number of devices shipped in the meantime perhaps?
I’d always been on the opinion of even just assuming they got to a point where the whole starnix linux syscall compatibility layer thing (which is what I see a lot of recent commits pointing towards) to a good point and stopped that it would still make sense in so many use cases that it would have been justified.
It would also change the number of devices shipped question from 1 dying product line to billions overnight which certainly might change the conversation and furthermore would put them into a pretty unique commercial position for more high assurance computing given the security model which would have a lot of follow on effects presumably
Also thanks again for taking the time to answer, you’re right I am genuinely very curious about this.
This must be a video game since they laid off most of the people after it was made
Of course they will enshitten it into unusability, but in theory they could put one over on Apple with this. It's "only" the software that stops Apple's iDevices from being usable as development platforms or general purpose computers. Google could offer something here that Apple won't.
OTOH this seems like exactly the sort of thing that Apple could suddenly announce at a september event. As you say, there are no hard technical barriers to getting this working.
Apple may come up with new surprises but I would be very surprised if this came to pass.
....and it's not wireless?! even Android Auto has a wireless mode...
Wireless to what? Android Auto uses your car's computer + wifi/BT chip + screen.
If you want to connect to any screen then you cannot rely on wireless connections.
That doesn't mean there couldn't be some future that is wireless, but are there any standard wireless communication protocols that have reached critical mass / popularity?
The excitement I feel about this shows how effectively Google and Apple have stockholmed us. We have supercomputers in our pockets and we can't even use them for some of the most fundamental computing tasks.
What do you consider to be a fundamental computing task?
They're pretty clearly listing "hooking it up to a keyboard and monitor to run software" as one of them.
Imagine Apple doing something like that, with MacOS now having some UI that is similar to iOS one might think could be the case in the future
Why sell one device when they can sell two? They'll only do it if they don't have a choice.
Is it just me or people here also think that the end game for this is to replace Chrome OS on Chromebooks.
Wait till John Solomon finds out about this!
@dang why is this flagged? The flagging system on this site is so incredibly bad. It’s always a tiny handful of users trying to control what others can see with zero logical consistency.
I'm not surprised, it's a horribly written article, like a paragraph of content stretched out over article-length by AI.
I flagged earlier because the first submission appeared to be blogspam by a new account posting only from that domain. The replacement article from Android Authority is much better.
Perhaps that's why: two total submissions from this site and both are added by same green account registered 7 days ago.
I agree, can anybody just willy nilly flag any post?
In practice it bears almost zero resemblance to its stated functionality and instead is really just an extension of personal preferences of a tiny minority of people. It’s embarrassingly unfit for purpose. This happens all the time where stories get flagged for no reason.
It's not a tiny minority of people. The karma threshold for flagging is deliberately kept low so this isn't the case.
> 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.
In that case perhaps the actual source article could be used: https://www.androidauthority.com/android-desktop-mode-leak-3...
Sure! Changed from https://tech.yahoo.com/phones/articles/first-look-google-unf... now.
If flag enabling is based on a threshold test, cannot un-flagging also be enabled based on a threshold test?
I'm afraid I don't understand the question. Can you explain a bit further?
Your response to the prior implied flagging is based on a deliberate choice of karma, to widen the gate on who can flag.
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.
There's no specific unflag feature, but upvoting has an inverse effect on flags.
Adopting this feels like a very risky proposition given Google's tendency to drop support for things. Samsung have supported DeX for almost a decade now.
"Google’s Secret Weapon Against Samsung DeX"
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.
Different things. This about the desktop mode of Dex and not phone to pc mirroring
Multitasking on a phone? I know screens are getting bigger, but it seems like a bit much to me... I can understand this on a tablet, but having two windows that im interacting with at the same time on a phone would feel really cramped, unless its one of those fold phones that are 2 or 3 in 1
You plug in a USB-C cable with DP-Alt mode (or whatever phones use) and you have a (4K) display of any size, keyboard and mouse (via the USB hub in the monitor), and webcam, speakers, whatever else that's connected to your monitor/hub/docking station.
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?
So I tried to replace my personal computer with an iPad pro thinking that all I need is some basic apps + a browser. I connect it to a docking station and try to use it as a desktop computer, and I really love being able to take notes with a stylus.
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!
This is purely a UX issue, and there's no particular reason why iOS would even need to be more open to rectify it. They just need to improve the UX.
But, more broadly, the problem is that they can do it for their own apps, but for all the third party ones, it's down to app developers whether they want to put in effort to support keyboard & mouse/trackpad properly. And it's a chicken and egg thing there - relatively few users use it currently, so there's little motivation to add support, which deters more potential users.
Yes you are correct on both accounts. The problem is two different OS approach. What I need is an iPad hardware running macOS actially, with a tablet mode. Same issue with Chrome OS/Android separation.
Funnily enough Windows is the closest to get this right with 2-in-1 tablet/laptops. 2 problems with this: 1- Windows, 2- sub-par HW.
A secure device. Pixel with graphene and this thing lets you keep all your classified eggs in one basket, but it is a really hard to pry open basket. At home you can do stuff on it with the same comfort as on PC, but you can always have it in pocket.
This is for when you connect it to a large screen
Even on a phone, I regularly split my screen vertically to research while writing without swiping back and forth between apps.
I’m against smartphones. Sure, they’re a technological marvel, but they’re also incredibly dumb in practice. They’re built mainly for consumption, not creation. They feel like walled gardens that limit freedom and stifle creativity. The hardware might be amazing, but the software is awful. In the end, they mostly just make our kids dumber.
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.
This would be close to it. Google added a Linux VM to Android 15 QPR2. You can already try it on Pixel devices by enabling it through the developer options:
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!
Look at the ultra-compact form factor minipcs from e.g. beelink and gmktec. It's pretty much what you describe, and is an actual computer that you can run real operating systems like Linux on. The form factor is roughly 4" x 4" x 1.5", so fits in a pocket. On the low end, you can get an N150 with 8GB DDR4 for ~$125 on Amazon, which is still monstrously powerful for productive desktop use.
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).
>They’re built mainly for consumption, not creation.
This is true for almost all computers. That doesn't mean you can't use a computer built for consumption for creation.
strong disagree, computers are built for creation and work, not mindless consumption.
Have you never heard of categories such as "gaming pcs" or "netbooks" whose name literally describes how people will consume using it. Laptops advertise how long you can consumes using it's battery life in terms of movies and music.
This is largely due to the popularity of full touchscreen smartphones compared to those in the past that had hardware keyboards (for example Blackberry and Palm Treo devices).
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).
What's a good form factor for that? A Mac mini is an overkill for most of my needs. I wish there was a smaller form factor!
that's why i say a phone could be perfect for the job. it's just that current smartphones are stupid.
Many of the comments here talking about how phone hardware is capable enough to run a desktop - thereby obviating the need for a separate desktop/laptop - are missing the fact that consumers actually want multiple devices. Also, no consumer electronics company ever makes a successful business model on selling less stuff that does the same thing.
There are real functional/usability reasons for having a separate device (with its own compute/storage) in a laptop form factor, and furthermore if we are honest, laptops are a kind of student/professional fashion accessory (especially Macs), a social-signal that you are a "knowledge-worker". As a result, that form factor is not going away anytime soon.
What Google are doing seems less about the "desktop mode" for Android (though that's a necessary technical step) than it is about having a unified consumer OS experience between Android and ChromeOS, which according to reports, they are planning to merge.
> thereby obviating the need for a separate desktop/laptop - are missing the fact that consumers actually want multiple devices
Do they? What I want is the power of the desktop available when I have access to it (SW & HW), but if the phone is powerful enough (maybe with a small accelerator box for dGPUs to handle gaming/AI), I’m not really seeing the value of multiple devices; it’s just more clutter and stuff to maintain (e.g. SW context, more HW things that can break & require repair, etc). I’m already using remote VSCode to always program on my home desktop computer regardless where I am because it’s easier than juggling clones across machines and forgetting to sync somewhere.
> Do they? What I want is the power of the desktop available when I have access to it (SW & HW), but if the phone is powerful enough (maybe with a small accelerator box for dGPUs to handle gaming/AI), I’m not really seeing the value of multiple devices
Isn't that "small accelerator box for dGPUs" another device? That seems like adding more complexity, not less.
Based on what you shared, I don't think you are representative of the majority of the consumer computing device market. There are real human factors (functional and social) that have resulted in the current laptop and desktop form-factors, and why many attempts to completely replace either have failed.
> I’m already using remote VSCode to always program on my home desktop computer regardless where I am ...
Are you doing your remote VSCode session on a phone? You must need at least a 13" laptop (or phone dock device with a screen/keyboard/battery) for that. At that point, why not just use a laptop, and avoid the complexity of plugging/syncing with a phone?
> another device?
Sure. But so is the monitor. But it significantly lowers the cost of the experience since I don't need separate CPU+RAM+Motherboard for a desktop.
> There are real human factors (functional and social) that have resulted in the current laptop and desktop form-factors, and why many attempts to completely replace either have failed.
Sure, or maybe the lackluster SW for such an experience is the reason it's failed. No one cares about a desktop form factor. Laptops have clearly eaten that market except for enthusiasts and you clearly see this cannibolization attempt by all players. I don't think they'll stop just because you've declared they've failed because getting this right & winning is a huge advantage.
> Are you doing your remote VSCode session on a phone? You must need at least a 13" laptop (or phone dock device with a screen/keyboard/battery) for that. At that point, why not just use a laptop, and avoid the complexity of plugging/syncing with a phone?
I think you're just grossly misunderstanding what I'm saying. If I can plug my phone into a monitor + keyboard + mouse & the phone can run VSCode with all my extensions, the point of a laptop drastically disappears. Then when I'm done work I unplug my phone and go home. The point of avoiding a laptop is cost - I have a $3k laptop that's not providing any value over a monitor + keyboard + mouse especially when I already need the keyboard + mouse to do any coding. For that cost I could have two massive really nice displays and STILL be saving money. The coding is an extreme example but you can see how simpler versions of this, which is what Android and Samsung are building, can remove the need for many laptops that kids carry around - just put your laptop shell that's just a monitor + keyboard + mouse into your backpack, pull it out, connect your phone, and start taking notes. Moreover, in a corporate environment you can now have multiple people sharing the resources of 1 machine. In fact, many coding shops even just give you a VM to do all your work on with a thin client for the local UI.
> I think you're just grossly misunderstanding what I'm saying. If I can plug my phone into a monitor + keyboard + mouse & the phone can run VSCode with all my extensions, the point of a laptop drastically disappears.
In that case, you are tied to working in places that have a monitor + keyboard + mouse ready to plug into. Perhaps that isn't a problem for your work (or allows you to put needed boundaries around where you work), but there are many people who need to have an 11+" screen and keyboard in arbitrary places, like conference rooms, libraries, classrooms, job sites, etc.
> The point of avoiding a laptop is cost - I have a $3k laptop that's not providing any value over a monitor + keyboard + mouse especially when I already need the keyboard + mouse to do any coding.
I agree that a $3k laptop is overboard. Using a laptop like that for remote-desktop and web browsing has more to do with social-signaling. But it raises the question, did you buy the $3k laptop or did your employer? If it was your employer, is it your financial problem?
For my part, I do personal local development on an $800 laptop (a Chromebook) that works pretty great. If I were only using it for coding tasks with an external display and input devices like you describe, I bet I could just as well use a $200 laptop, but I do care about display quality in on-to-go use cases, so I spent more for a higher end display.
So I'm in full agreement that one should not throw away money at overpriced laptops, but the laptop form factor itself is still pretty indispensable for doing work in arbitrary places. Somehow, I don't see VR/AR goggles that Apple and Samsung are pushing replacing them any time soon.
As long as its primary/blessed development language remain Kotlin, the Android ecosystem will remain inaccessible to me. It's not that I can't learn Kotlin, but I don't want to. When I want to develop an application on my desktop, it boils down to just `g++ ...` it, if I chose to. That is to say, I don't need GBs worth of download and a blessed IDE and gluttonous build system (the abomination called Gradle) to make my application. So, Android spreading everywhere is not good news for me. It's OK on my phone - I only use it, not do much development on it. Well, I could have, but not with something I consider as reasonable effort.
Because Linux terminal is coming to Android (and since Android is Linux), you can run whatever you want, not just Kotlin.