Google is building its own DeX: First look at Android's Desktop Mode

https://www.androidauthority.com/android-desktop-mode-leak-3550321/

by logic_node • 1 year ago

448 414 1 year ago

Welcome to ChromeOS 2.0

bobajeff• 1 year ago

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.

Miraste2• 1 year ago

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.

mdhb6• 1 year ago

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.

nashashmi4• 1 year ago

What’s the point of running fuschia on android? It should be the other way around: android vm on fuschia.

simpaticoder• 1 year ago

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.

pram• 1 year ago

Phones also have CPUs, JFYI.

trealira• 1 year ago

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.

bee_rider• 1 year ago

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.

eru24• 1 year ago

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?

dboreham• 1 year ago

Is this an AI-generated article? Article about novel UI with no screenshots??

tecleandor• 1 year ago

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]

  0: https://www.androidauthority.com/android-desktop-mode-leak-3550321/

matt_heimer• 1 year ago

Thanks for that. I hadn't seen a nexdock before.

twiclo• 1 year ago

The article seems to just repeat the first couple of sentences over and over.

moolcool• 1 year ago

Google Is Catching Up to Samsung DeX

Does anyone use DeX?

szszrk• 1 year ago

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).

ewoodrich• 1 year ago

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.

longtimelistnr• 1 year ago

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.

mrheosuper2• 1 year ago

What should have been is MacOS on ipad. Even the ipad has the same CPU.

Zambyte• 1 year ago

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.

NBJack3• 1 year ago

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.

0xbadcafebee2• 1 year ago

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.

the_clarence5• 1 year ago

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.

permo-w10• 1 year ago

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

rcMgD2BwE72F• 1 year ago

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).

tsunamifury• 1 year ago

Plug it into my pc?

What is this 1995?

goosedragons2• 1 year ago

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.

lostmsu• 1 year ago

Why would you want to plug in if you can sync them over Wi-Fi using Syncthing?

chneu5• 1 year ago

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.

microtonal3• 1 year ago

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.

edm0nd• 1 year ago

skills issue for sure

moogly• 1 year ago

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.

eru24• 1 year ago

There's lots of different Android phones. Some of them work better for some people than others.

davidcollantes• 1 year ago

How does this relates to the submission's "Desktop View"? Genuinely trying to find the connection.

65103• 1 year ago

The desktop view is for larger screens, it is somewhat similar to fordable phones.

jccalhoun• 1 year ago

Rumors are Apple will be inventing the folding phone in a year or two.

logic_node2• 1 year ago

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!

hbn• 1 year ago

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.

voidUpdate• 1 year ago

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

bgnn4• 1 year ago

This is for when you connect it to a large screen

alias_neo• 1 year ago

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?

112233• 1 year ago

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.

bgnn4• 1 year ago

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!

lern_too_spel2• 1 year ago

Even on a phone, I regularly split my screen vertically to research while writing without swiping back and forth between apps.

enragedcacti• 1 year ago

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=...

chneu5• 1 year ago

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.

asabla• 1 year ago

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

vizzier2• 1 year ago

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.

RajT88• 1 year ago

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.

AdmiralAsshat• 1 year ago

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.

assassinator42• 1 year ago

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.

wiktor-k• 1 year ago

It's interesting to hear because Samsung had a Linux feature previously: https://developer.samsung.com/sdp/blog/en/2017/10/18/samsung...

caleb-allen2• 1 year ago

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

Calwestjobs• 1 year ago

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.

modeless• 1 year ago

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.

pjmlp3• 1 year ago

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.

eru24• 1 year ago

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.)

apitman10• 1 year ago

What do you mean by tunneling here; remote desktop or does vscode run on the 8a?

caleb-allen2• 1 year ago

Plug for reddit.com/r/androidterminal !

mac-attack• 1 year ago

This is instantly where my mind went as well.

xnx2• 1 year ago

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.

jeroenhd• 1 year ago

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..

packetlost• 1 year ago

I mean, what I really want is chromebook shaped shell that I slot my phone into for travel with an extended external battery.

stanac• 1 year ago

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).

xnx2• 1 year ago

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.

Melatonic• 1 year ago

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....

codethief3• 1 year ago

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.

mrheosuper2• 1 year ago

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.

jasonlotito• 1 year ago

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.

nashashmi4• 1 year ago

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.

buzzerbetrayed• 1 year ago

As someone who likely never would have bought a windows phone, I sure wish Microsoft would have stuck with it

runjake2• 1 year ago

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

rcmjr• 1 year ago

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...

ThrowawayB7• 1 year ago

The HP Elite x3 had it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Elite_x3 . The phone came with a docking cradle with desktop ports.

TowerTall• 1 year ago

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

p1necone• 1 year ago

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.

nashashmi4• 1 year ago

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.

lanthissa• 1 year ago

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.

mushufasa• 1 year ago

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.

microtonal3• 1 year ago

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).

logic_node2• 1 year ago

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!

MBCook4• 1 year ago

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.

reaperducer• 1 year ago

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.

Tijdreiziger• 1 year ago

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...

jerf• 1 year ago

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.

robotnikman• 1 year ago

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

danans4• 1 year ago

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-...

MBCook4• 1 year ago

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.

codethief3• 1 year ago

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.

lynndotpy6• 1 year ago

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.

bsimpson• 1 year ago

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.

fc417fc802• 1 year ago

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.)

627467• 1 year ago

Last time I used DeX you phone does become a TouchPad for the desktop when plugged to a monitor

eru24• 1 year ago

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.

dzdt• 1 year ago

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.

gwbas1c2• 1 year ago

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.

benrutter2• 1 year ago

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.

bongodongobob• 1 year ago

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.

jml7c5• 1 year ago

The peripherals need not be anything more than a clamshell screen + keyboard, same as a laptop.

taeric• 1 year ago

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.

pcchristie2• 1 year ago

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.

stackskipton2• 1 year ago

Windows Phone had this ability, it was called Continuum: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...

eru24• 1 year ago

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.

zigzag3124• 1 year ago

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.

hulitu• 1 year ago

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.

gf000• 1 year ago

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..

GenshoTikamura• 1 year ago

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"

Gareth321• 1 year ago

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.

wkat424218• 1 year ago

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).

fsflover9• 1 year ago

this done well is a transformational thing, its just no one has been willing to invest yet

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19328085

mdhb6• 1 year ago

@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.

mnmalst• 1 year ago

I agree, can anybody just willy nilly flag any post?

mdhb6• 1 year ago

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.

jsnell• 1 year ago

I'm not surprised, it's a horribly written article, like a paragraph of content stretched out over article-length by AI.

pndy• 1 year ago

Perhaps that's why: two total submissions from this site and both are added by same green account registered 7 days ago.

SquareWheel• 1 year ago

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.

SirFatty• 1 year ago

"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.

TiredOfLife• 1 year ago

Different things. This about the desktop mode of Dex and not phone to pc mirroring

kome3• 1 year ago

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.

microtonal3• 1 year ago

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!

thesuperbigfrog• 1 year ago

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).

charcircuit4• 1 year ago

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.

kome3• 1 year ago

strong disagree, computers are built for creation and work, not mindless consumption.

bgnn4• 1 year ago

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!

kome3• 1 year ago

that's why i say a phone could be perfect for the job. it's just that current smartphones are stupid.

ndriscoll• 1 year ago

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).

lillecarl4• 1 year ago

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 :)

saratogacx• 1 year ago

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...

wkat424218• 1 year ago

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.

MetaWhirledPeas• 1 year ago

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.

lillecarl4• 1 year ago

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.

anonzzzies3• 1 year ago

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.

happyopossum• 1 year ago

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.

lillecarl4• 1 year ago

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.

johnea2• 1 year ago

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.

lucasoshiro• 1 year ago

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

charcircuit4• 1 year ago

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.

johnea2• 1 year ago

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...

NBJack3• 1 year ago

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.

halyconWays2• 1 year ago

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?

cakealert• 1 year ago

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.

NBJack3• 1 year ago

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.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 1 year ago

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?

cycomanic• 1 year ago

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.

alabastervlog2• 1 year ago

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.

anonzzzies3• 1 year ago

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.

fsflover9• 1 year ago

Linux Desktop

This is exactly what Librem 5 phone offers. (My daily driver.)

kkapelon2• 1 year ago

I tried this and battery goes down very quickly on the phone. Do you have a solution for this?

_zoltan_• 1 year ago

powerbank?

bluGill6• 1 year ago

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?

highclass2• 1 year ago

What bluetooth keyboard do you use? I thinking I want to try this out :)

apitman10• 1 year ago

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.

smusamashah• 1 year ago

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

0xbadcafebee2• 1 year ago

....and it's not wireless?! even Android Auto has a wireless mode...

neogodless5• 1 year ago

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?

maelito• 1 year ago

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.

eru24• 1 year ago

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.

72deluxe3• 1 year ago

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.

czhu12• 1 year ago

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

nsonha2• 1 year ago

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.

nalinidash• 1 year ago

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.

nsonha2• 1 year ago

Ubuntu Touch is not that usable as, say, a dev machine, cannot run docker for example.

hollowturtle• 1 year ago

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

Jyaif• 1 year ago

Why sell one device when they can sell two? They'll only do it if they don't have a choice.

tjpnz• 1 year ago

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.

haolez• 1 year ago

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.

72deluxe3• 1 year ago

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.

pcchristie2• 1 year ago

Re-posting this at top level, curious what others think.

ejj28• 1 year ago

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.

adithyassekhar• 1 year ago

I think the bigger issue will be sabotage from Google just like last time. Who would use a phone without google maps or YouTube?

oofbaroomf• 1 year ago

I wondered if Microsoft would...do this properly

No.

yonatan8070• 1 year ago

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.

int_19h2• 1 year ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Continuum

WhereIsTheTruth• 1 year ago

Why do people want Microsoft to dominate?

This is baffling to read

bluGill6• 1 year ago

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.

bufferoverflow• 1 year ago

I've been using BlueStacks X to run android apps on desktop. Seems to work okay.

neogodless5• 1 year ago

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?

ankurdhama• 1 year ago

The clock and notification area are still at top doesn't make sense. These should move to taskbar in desktop mode.

apitman10• 1 year ago

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.

robertoandred• 1 year ago

What do you consider to be a fundamental computing task?

Dylan16807• 1 year ago

They're pretty clearly listing "hooking it up to a keyboard and monitor to run software" as one of them.

matt3210• 1 year ago

This must be a video game since they laid off most of the people after it was made

qalmakka• 1 year ago

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)

nasretdinov2• 1 year ago

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

andrewstuart2• 1 year ago

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.

neogodless5• 1 year ago

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...

holografix• 1 year ago

Wait till John Solomon finds out about this!

penguin_booze• 1 year ago

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.

satvikpendem• 1 year ago

Because Linux terminal is coming to Android (and since Android is Linux), you can run whatever you want, not just Kotlin.

Farbklex• 1 year ago

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.

filleokus• 1 year ago

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.

znpy• 1 year ago

Even though I don't need the screen

The screen could be used as a touchpad

eb0la• 1 year ago

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.

ulrikrasmussen• 1 year ago

I will never use Android on the desktop as long as Play Integrity is a thing.

soapdog• 1 year ago

Is it just me or people here also think that the end game for this is to replace Chrome OS on Chromebooks.

zombot2• 1 year ago

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.

fergie• 1 year ago

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.

zombot2• 1 year ago

Apple may come up with new surprises but I would be very surprised if this came to pass.

tw04• 1 year ago

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.

maratc8• 1 year ago

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.

prettyStandard2• 1 year ago

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.

fsflover9• 1 year ago

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).

npteljes2• 1 year ago

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.

apitman10• 1 year ago

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.

anal_reactor• 1 year ago

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.

neogodless5• 1 year ago

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!"

ryandvm• 1 year ago

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.

dmos623• 1 year ago

I wish they'd open-source what they're shuttering. Would be a win-win as far as I can tell.

christkv• 1 year ago

If they did it would probably have to be rewritten as it probably depends on a ton of internal google systems.

beernet• 1 year ago

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.

dakna• 1 year ago

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.

giancarlostoro• 1 year ago

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.

make3• 1 year ago

that's not their best bet, their best bet is Gemini integration with all Google Workspace apps and Gemini eating Google search progressively

e40• 1 year ago

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.

michaelbuckbee• 1 year ago

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.

simultsop• 1 year ago

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.

olau• 1 year ago

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.

wltr• 1 year ago

Would love to read some blog about that, just in case you have.

neogodless5• 1 year ago

Was this a Surface RT (very old ARM - Nvidia Tegra), Surface Pro (Intel), or Surface X (ARM - SQ1 / SQ2)?

garylkz• 1 year ago

Remind me about Fuchsia in 3 years

dhosek• 1 year ago

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.

palata• 1 year ago

Important to me: is that part of AOSP, or is that part of the proprietary Google stuff?

danans4• 1 year ago

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.

vlovich1232• 1 year ago

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.

danans4• 1 year ago

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?

cvhc• 1 year ago

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.

fifteen1506• 1 year ago

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!

ge96• 1 year ago

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.

game_the0ry• 1 year ago

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).

hollerith• 1 year ago

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.

hagbard_c• 1 year ago

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.

foobarbecue• 1 year ago

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...?

vdfs• 1 year ago

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,

Google is building its own DeX: First look at Android's Desktop Mode

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