Smartphone is already many folks' only computer – say hi to optional desktop mode in Android 15 beta It's been tried before, more than once, but if it comes as a stock feature, maybe people will actually start to use the feature. Google's Pixel 9 range of fondleslabs is coming soon, and the company has already announced an event, Made by Google, for August 13 at 1000 Pacific Time (that's 1700 UTC, and 1800 for Brits.) The new …
Haha, I almost found myself using Dex the other day... I had to 'attend' my first MS Teams meeting for a job interview. My once powerful but old laptop was still on Win 7 so no Teams, my desktop doesn't have a webcam or microphone, another old laptop was on Win 10 but was slow and had noisy fans and HDD. Options I considered included installing Linux as a dual boot option on the laptops, using a cable to turn my phone into a webcam and mic for my desktop, using a USB C cable to run Dex on my desktop PC, and using a USB C to HDMI adaptor to mirror my phone's display on to a TV. Trying the latter method instigated Dex (phone screen turns into a track pad), so I pondered on that as a possible solution too.
Eventually sanity prevailed and I just borrowed my friend's iPad.
I could see myself trying Dex or similar again in future, when I've bought a suitable dock.
The Samson Meteor Mic is an astoundingly good USB microphone for a very reasonable price. No installation required, just plug it in and it works.
I'm sure you can find a proper USB webcam for not much either.
You're right, it would have been prudent of me to just buy the right accessories in advance, instead of assuming that I could cobble together something from bits of kit that I have lying around. But... that's not in the spirit of the game!
I've largely let the last decade's computer trends (Skype, Teams etc) pass me by. A desktop workstation for computery tasks and a phone for communication seemed to have got me this far... but the cracks are beginning to show.
New job may require working with Mac Photoshop users, travelling away may be involved, Win 11 won't support my desktop's CPU, I'd like to explore a stylus interface for some applications, AutoCAD Fusion may be an acceptable substitute for Window-only Solidworks, a late model Intel MacBook Pro with bootcamp may or may not be a sensible purchase, Civ VI isn't that much fun anyway...
Being a mere colonial living in a location where these little sharp toothed buggers are banned I had to look up Reverse Ferret. British English certainly has the more colourful vocabulary. ;)
I wonder if Drop the Dead Donkey was based on Kelvin MacKenzie's time at The Sun?
Out here he might have suggested shove a goanna* up the weasels' trousers to experience somewhat more than just discomfort.
The various video call and conferencing technologies have always left me cold - invariably an enormous waste of (my) time trying to communicate with illiterate imbeciles whose core problem was their imbecility (not easily legally cureable, unfortunately.)
* monitor lizard which are said to run up trouser legs mistaking legs for trees. :)
As most companies are run by egotistic, fad-following fools, your pointing out the errors of their ways, directly or indirectly, will result in your failing the interview.
But, if you do pass the interview, you'll know you're joining a sensible company (or that the interviewer is about to quit the company in anger and disgust, and wants to put a ferret - you - in their trousers).
You're right don't *need* a special dock if you have a Bluetooth keyboard, and a USB C to HDMI adaptor (or a monitor with USB C). I believe the first version of Dex on older Galaxy phones did push you towards a special Dex dock that had a cooling fan. This why I was surprised that my Galaxy S10 defaulted to Dex when I connected it to a TV - I was expecting screen mirroring, which I think my S8 did.
If you just have a USB C cable, you can install a Dex client on a PC, basically giving that PC's monitor, mouse and keyboard over to the phone. The use cases for this approach are narrower (after all, you already have a running PC!), though possibly useful if:
-you don't want to enter login credentials into the PC
- you want to use a full keyboard with SMS and other messaging apps
- The PC doesn't have a WiFi connection... though using the phone as a hotspot is another solution
- The PC doesn't have a webcam or microphone.
- ummm... The PC has hideous wallpaper?
One great use of DeX is running apps in full screen that you can't do with screen mirroring; I used to do this with some video services. And some file management was a little more intuitive than using the MTP client, especially on MacOS, but this is so slow that I now generally use using a sync folder on Dropbox.
Not all USB-C to HDMI dongles work – I was particularly annoyed that the one for my Planet Gemini wouldn't – and the physical connection to the phone is the achilles heel of this, as you'll want to be able to charge the device while using it. I'm keeping my S10e around just so that I can continue to do this, but I think the connection has silted, or perhaps better, "felted" up over the years: there are reasons why Nokia and Ericsson avoided recessed connectors on phones.
When it's working, it's great for using on holiday to write postcards.
> Not all USB-C to HDMI dongles work
My understanding is that docks sold as being compatible with the Nintendo Switch also behaved themselves with Dex (Switch owners outnumbered Dex users, so user reviews were easier to find). Such docks would power the phone whilst also outputting video over HDMI.
Of course a dock that also has a couple of USB A sockets for mouse, keyboard or storage is handy, and not seemingly not expensive, maybe the pricier ones are more reliable, I don't know.
My cheap Goobay one works, but so does the Satecchi one I got for the Mac. But the port on a phone is not really mechanically suited for the kind of movement you're likely to get in this kind of situation: the slightest wobble and the connection will be lost and you have to set things up again.
> But the port on a phone is not really mechanically suited for the kind of movement you're likely to get in this kind of situation
I’ve used some of the magnetic usb-c connectors. However, the charging only ones have a more secure fit in the USB port than the full function ones, although on the laptop I note magnetic adaptor isn’t totally transparent and so transfer rates aren’t as high as with a direct cable connection.
> Not all USB-C to HDMI dongles work
The devil is in the detail, both with respect to the signalling the dongle accepts as input from the USB and what it will output to the HDMI line, and then matching this to what your monitor will accept and what your computer actually sends…. The other fun with usb-c-to-HDMI is audio… Naturally this information isn’t always available. Finding adaptors that also support charging…
For general usage (ie. Place in the backpack) I use a powered USB-C hub that works with iMac and iPad devices, this requirement seems to avoid many of the not working HDMI connection head scratching.
Currently looking for an HDMI-to-USB dongle as camera has an HDMI output…
Although:
item/1005005802533086.html
On aliexpress gets you the ability to dp out AND charge your phone... for a fiver.
Or:
item/1005005429428796.html
Which lets you plug your phone straight into hdmi on a telly...
I mean, if you pay a few grand for a fondleslab, you shouldn't be quaking on a few quid for the right cables.
My experience differs. Dex may not be the best experience but way ahead of what iPhones could offer (unless something has changes since they got forced to use usbc). Dex works with any usbc/tb dock. Supports all attached peripherals (input devices, monitor, Ethernet port) and works pretty well. It may not offer 1 to 1 pixel mapping I'd expect on proper desktop (or maybe other graphics limitations made this impression) but it's more than usable.
No way I'd give up real desktop though. So many other things are crippled on mobiles. Thank you very much for the walled garden mentality.
And calling a bt mouse a non proprietary solution is msomewhat isleading. It's not not an open standard, just a common one. And it suck for mouse/keyboard and even audio (lipsync issue renders it unusable for most video media).
I'm not sure why you couldn't do what you needed with an iPhone. Since about iPhone 8 I had been successful using the Apple multimedia dongle with a
(small) bt keyboard. I could use the phone as a trackpad, but found that a bt mouse worked well for me. Software used included the standard Apple apps and Excel, Word, and a couple of ssh clients. When travelling light I would use the above with a longish HDMI cable to connect to hotel TVs, or a projector for demos (often Keynote with a VGA adapter instead of the HDMI). On one occasion another presenter had to borrow the setup as they couldn't get their Windows 7 laptop to connect to the projector.
Always been interested in a full-on Desktop Environment on Mobile. I've used DeX with Samsung devices, installed MaruOS back in the day on my Nexus 5 to check that out. Heard that the Fairphone 5 has a Desktop Environment capability with Stock Android.
I mainly use GrapheneOS on my current Pixels (8 Pro, 7 and 7a) and would like to see Desktops come there as well (I suppose I could do this with a Pixel Fold/Tablet with GrapheneOS).
There are a few legitimate reasons:
1. The USB port requires support for displays and some don't have them.
2. The SoC may have limitations on screen size and refuse to support something larger.
And the ones that will actually matter a lot of the time, but not so legitimate:
3. If you don't let one phone do it, then maybe people will choose to buy the more expensive one that can.
4. The hardware can, the software can, but you need something like a kernel update and nobody is going to rebuild a newer kernel for this phone. Why not, they don't take too long to build, and there are phones with the same chip that already run the latest kernel so you don't need to wait for the SoC manufacturer to do something? If this operating system had been built competently, this process could almost be automatic. Nobody knows, but the manufacturers just won't do it. You can sit there explaining all the reasons why this should be no problem, but no matter how much you do so, the new component will never arrive.
Many years ago, I hacked an android 5.0 TV box to do just that. It's since died, and I miss it. I've seen no better airmouse compatible UI that android. Later androids are more locked down (I was able to have native NFS mounts, root-running cron, syslog, dnsmasq, etc.
Basically, with android and a mouse, instead of needing scroll bars, the whole window acts as the scroll bar, so you can easily drag-scroll the window in 2 dimensions. (To copy text you just hold the button down for 2 seconds first... It's most intuitive)
I updated to a chromebox for the same interface, but in chromebox mode, it doesn't do it (it uses the traditional press-and-move-mouse = copy) and in android mode, there is a sort of mixture of both... Play store has annoyingly switched to the former method, but without even having scroll bars, and the pageup/down cursort/up/down don't work, .so unless you have a touchscreen or a scroll wheel, your'e now screwed... Bunch of muppets... It used to work perfectly....How I wish I could have a proper native Unix desktop again, without having to remote-X or VNC stuff.
Old Android 5.0 desktop snaps:
http://www.catflap.org/jamie/photos/computers/desktop/android/20180726-1.png
http://www.catflap.org/jamie/photos/computers/desktop/android/20180726-2.png
http://www.catflap.org/jamie/photos/computers/desktop/android/20190316.png
This could be a very useful feature. But probably limited to Google Pixel phones.
A lot of cool Android stuff gets stripped out by other manufacturers.
For example Samsung phones do not support useing the phone as a web cam, or Font Size quick tile. Nowhere to be seen on Samsung Android 14.
Then Samsungs appalling Camera2 API support.
Android fragmentation is worse than ever.
Just get a generic android tv box.....
https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2024/07/12/android_15_beta_desktop/#c_4894009
What you really want is a Planet Gemini, the Psion Series 5 form factor with full millennial tech refresh. Already runs Android, just crying for a desktop mode.
Google just need to grok two things:
1) Don't dump the incomparable Martin Riddiford for the clamshell keyboard design, like Planet did with their later models.
2) Turn off the feckin' awful predictive text when typing, because its I-know-you-wanted-a-control-sequence-really leaps into the unknown happen faster than we can spot in time for the next touch-typed keypress.
Eh? Naw, it was a fully native touch experience and even on the potato hardwares I tried it on it was generally nicer to use than Android. Hell, it was doing fluid swipe-based UI stuff before, and still better than, Android. The reasons for its failure are elsewhere.
One reason is just, it's hard to gain much ground against huge market leaders. A lot of other specific issues just came naturally from that.
An unforced error that can entirely be laid at Ubuntu's feet though is that despite some initial chatter at the time Canonical wouldn't come to the table and agree on a common set of QML widgets so that apps could automatically be cross-platform between Plasma, SailfishOS, and Ubuntu Touch. It wasn't (and isn't, as a community project exists that still maintains Ubuntu Touch) *that* hard to modify the same native app to run on each, but that extra bit of work is a non-trivial hurdle, and while SailfishOS has a developer community inherited from its Nokia Maemo heritage and Plasma Mobile benefits from all the work done on KDE applications for desktop (which end up lighter than most Android apps due to shared components and services), Ubuntu was starting from square one for apps, so any additional complications were salt in a wound.
The cross platform widgets thing is kind of solved with the Suru QQC2 style on UT - it's just a QQC2 theme so the app can mostly work across desktop/KDE/UT with the same GUI. Sailfish is still doing it's own thing on an even more ancient version of Qt than UT (5.6 vs 5.12, both not officially supported anymore).
But yeah, Canonical not playing nice with others is the reason most of their ideas fail to be adopted (upstart, mirserver, snap) even if technically they aren't that bad.
I think it failed because it wasn’t android and an app that could be installed on any phone. Additionally, Canonical seemed to prefer to demo it as an experiment rather than as a finished product.
But the real challenge wasn’t so much the desktop but the applications, effectively you needed both a phone document tool and a desktop tool on the same device. So the real challenge was marrying the two differing user interfaces and differing usage styles and requirements. I would hope this Android take on the problem is both more seamless and more widely adopted.
What is interesting, is that people will probably buy a phone that can be docked and used as a computer; although it probably won’t replace the business standard 15~16 inch laptop.
Judging from years of using Sailfish, and looking at others, it is actually very time consuming to get the hardware working fully. AFAIK, there are zero open phones where the hardware is fully operational.
I'm not sure why this is so, Sailfish uses a shim layer over the Android hardware interface to make it easy, but it still takes Jolla a year to get most of the bugs out of each port.
And not we have 4G. With the 3G turn off, there will be no voice for many alternative phones, as VoLTE requires the phone manufacturer and the carrier to make the codeplug for the system. So that's the end of Sailfish here - Sony phones (android or otherwise) don't work on any of the 3 networks 4G VoLTE.
Nah. Microsoft doesn't care about OSes anymore. Nobody does except Apple, and even then it's a means to an end for selling hardware. This is the whole reason Windows has gone straight down the toilet after 7, their new business is cloud. Azure, Office 365, now everything is a subscription. Windows, at best, is a means to an end to promote that stuff, which is why it has built-in ads for them. You think MS doesn't know what they're doing when they degrade Windows by forcing you to use OneDrive and look at ads for Office? They know what they're doing, they just don't care. Go ahead and use another OS, they stopped caring about selling those a decade ago. Otherwise, stick around to act as another number using OneDrive and Copilot to make the investors happier.
I'd love for cellphones to do double duty as a portable computer. They're up to 24GB RAM, 1TB storage, and have GPUs supporting 4K. The problem is that Google has screwed Android far too much for it to work.
Google's Storage Area Framework (aka kill storage that isn't Google Cloud) completely broke local storage except as a private cache. Google's solution to Google's own apps draining the battery while spying has broken multi-tasking. Apps-in-windows has been in development for over a decade and partially supported by so many apps that it's likely in shambles by now. The stranglehold on AOSP development via Play Store app rules prevents the kinds of innovations needed for any of this to work.
Android forks are appearing in China. If those spread it could enable a new surge of mobile innovation.
I switched from a pixel to a moto edge for the desktop feature, and though the camera is noticeably worse, the desktop mode is nice to have.
Its called Motorola Ready For, and it has actually been a bit nicer than Samsung's Dex for a little few years, though the terrible name (and using the same name for an application to display your phone apps on your computer [Windows only of course]) doesn't help.
I've been trying it for a bit, and there are so many things that are still rough around the edges, though not surprising given the niche. Firefox is a terrible experience, websites look exactly like they do on a phone even when stretched out to a landscape view and using desktop mode, but it doesn't matter. Password autofill doesn't work in FF either. Chrome is unfortunately a lot better in that regard.
But other features of ready mode are nice. The ability to have two audio sources playing simultaneously (vs stock android only letting one video/audio play at a time) is very nice. The launcher when starting up to quickly get into some apps, or the desktop mode can be handy.
Mostly I use Moonlight to stream apps from my desktop to a TV, though the 3rd party dongles are usually pretty crappy and break after not too long.
I'm looking forward to seeing what Google does for the stock AOSP images. Right now it's just mirroring the screen, though if we could get more features like Ready For has, then that would be great. The ultimate goal would have to have GrapheneOS with the desktop mode really, though. Of course, GrapheneOS also started doing android auto as soon as I'd switched away too.
Though, Android has nice mobile apps, I wonder if a mobile Linux OS wouldn't be a better way to approach it. Never tried the ones that are out now.
If you're looking for a 'proper' desktop to use with your phone connected to a monitor, then maybe something like - https://ivonblog.com/en-us/posts/termux-proot-distro-debian/ would work? It doesn't require root, unlocking, or anything 'dodgy' to get working.
It's a faff to setup, but once done it's a 1-click icon to launch an XFCE desktop session. It uses the VirGL driver, so the desktop is pretty smooth, and you have the full desktop Firefox (and most other applications). It's not worth doing to use on the phone screen, but if you're looking for a desktop while plugged into a monitor / mouse / keyboard, it could work in that scenario. I switched to a 2nd hand Galaxy S23U for Dex, and the above works pretty well on it.
Despite the hopes of proponents of Linux on the desktop (I've used Linux on my PC since 1997 but I don't evangelize it since I realize its not for the average person) or the hopes of Google with Chrome, most people want to run Windows. This solution only allows them to run some sort of bastardized Android desktop, or with the right libraries, Chrome.
Now if someone made a deal with Microsoft to bundle a Windows license with their phone so that this sort of thing would allow it to become a Windows PC, I could see that potentially taking off (assuming Windows on ARM in general does well enough that Microsoft doesn't kill it, like they did with ARM already once and with every other non x86 ISA in the past)
I always thought that Apple would have the best chance to make this work since it was obvious to everyone that the Mac would eventually switch to ARM. They could sell the macOS "app" for a couple hundred bucks to limit the objections that it would cannibalize Mac Mini sales (I don't see how it would hurt Macbook sales since such a solution might replace a desktop but never a laptop) but that solution is just too clunky for Apple. If wireless HDMI ever went mainstream, maybe they'd consider it since if you had the right monitor, keyboard and mouse it would "just work".
Actually, an OS not being Windows is becoming decreasingly relevant. Sure, there are a ton of legacy apps still in circulation, but increasingly more and more of people's productivity routines are web-based. MS knew this a decade ago, they saw the writing on the wall and changed their primary business model to cloud with Azure. These days, everything is in your browser. Your email, office suite, video conferencing software. This is so blatant, Google made ChromeOS specifically to focus on this.
I'm not saying Windows is completely irrelevant yet, obviously it's still the powerhouse of gaming and development. But it's not going to stay that way for much longer. The whole world, even MS itself, is trying to get people off Windows. VSCode works in a browser, MS has a cloud gaming service, everything is going online and off the desktop, leaving Windows with a decreasing amount of relevancy. MS *wants* this, they're sick of lugging Windows' legacy support around. Windows still has some use for them, of course OEMs still pay out the wazoo for licenses, and they can use Windows to shovel ads at users, collect data for advertising and force them to use some of their tech to make them look better to investors, regardless of it's usefulness (what do you think OneDrive and Copilot is?) but the core functionality of Windows as a platform to foster developers while locking them into their ecosystem has expired, and now they hate Windows users.
I'm not saying it is as big of a deal as it would have been 20 years ago since more stuff is browser based, but it is still a big hurdle to overcome for the average consumer. Probably a lot of them could learn to get along using ChromeOS instead, but that's the key - "learn". They'd have to learn something new, but the average person does not want to do that if they can avoid it - that's probably been more responsible for Windows lock-in on the desktop than Windows only applications. This is the reason why outside of certain captive markets like schools where price is paramount, even though they could save a few dollars with a ChromeOS PC most people are willing to pay more for Windows.
A ChromeOS desktop mode in Android would have to overcome the hurdle of requiring not only the acquisition of a monitor that supports USB-C or a hub that outputs HDMI and learning a new OS that does things differently than they're used to. It might almost be better to have it present your Android home screen and treat the mouse as your finger, instead of ChromeOS, as at least they wouldn't have to learn something new. But then app developers would have to support this, and most Android apps don't even support tablets so good luck getting them to support desktop mode!
The way I see it a ChromeOS desktop mode suffers from the same problem as a ChromeOS PC. You do save more money (at the risk of losing both your phone and your PC if your phone breaks etc.) but you have to get used to a new way of doing things.
I've got a cheap Chromebook and it works just like a laptop. I've yet to come across the applications that absolutely have to run in Windows -- I daresay there are but the vast majority of users just use the Web for browsing and mail and for the limited amount of browsing and editing that people do.
(Curiously, though, the one stronghold of Windows I'm aware of are applications for radio amateurs.)
> This solution only allows them to run some sort of bastardized Android desktop, or with the right libraries, Chrome.
Dex lets you run Chrome and a Dex-optomised version of Office 365. That's a good chunk of many people's workflows.
Nobody is proposing Dex-like environments to be full Windows replacements. It's more for doing stuff that you can already do on your phone but better - because of a bigger screen, mouse and keyboard.
> [Apple] could sell the macOS "app" for a couple hundred bucks to limit the objections that it would cannibalize Mac Mini sales
Yeah no. No. Just look at all the stick that BMW got for selling cars with hardware features such as heated seats tied to subscriptions.
Apple would be inviting a lot of bad press if they did similar. The "I shouldn't have to pay extra to use the hardware I've already bought!" is a simple message. Apple aren't averse to bad press per se, but they always maximise how much money they make from an unpopular decision.
And MacOS on a TV? Nah. The first (Intel) Apple TV models actually ran a hobbled OSX, and full OS functionality could hacked out of them. But it was a sub par experience, slow CPU, low Res screen, keyboard balanced on your knees.
If Reform UK and Faredge had their way there doubtlessly would be a British Universal Coordinated Time (UTCB*) but you would also have to know your Nones and Kalends from your Ides.
* Temps Universel Coordonné Britanique can't trust these boffins not to white-ant you.
I don’t know how people navigate their lives online with just a phone.
Maybe I’m just old.
As a PC and phone user, I’d hate to have to book or research complex transactions on just a phone.
Maybe people miss clues when using phones and this gives rise to more successful scams.
???
I think of my phone as a backup for the times I can't use a desktop computer. Part of that is probably getting older in terms of my thought processes, plus the fact that I find staring at a tiny pocket computer screen tiring on my eyes. And despite using mobile devices since my early Droid, I still dislike touchscreens for typing more than a brief text.
Given a sufficiently powerful phone that you can dock with external displays and peripherals, I could get by with that.
Some considerable time back I was scribbling a spec for a standard recharging dock. Using Bluetooth, a cable or a cable to memory card slot adaptor, your iPhone or Android screen would be duplicated on your PC monitor. You could use your keyboard and mouse to use any mobile app on your PC [or Mac] screen - it would be working on your mobile at the same time. You could expand the screen on the PC monitor up to the limits of each field on the mobile app. You could also copy and paste between your PC files and your mobile in its window. I felt it would be good for office use of mobiles. Walk in, slot your mobile in the recharger, and all of your mobile functionality (including telephony) would be accessible on your PC (or laptop). I wondered why it hadn't been implemented as standard from the early days of mobiles as it seemed like an easy and simply solution for interoperability. There would be no need to have a Mac for an iPhone or a PC for an Android as the PC/Mac app would be copying the screen functionality. Three input fields for text, eight buttons etc. The mobile would then accept the relevant interaction as you typed and clicked. Any device and any app would work on any desktop or laptop. It would be OS agnostic.
But not my thing as I don't use smartphones much, so I didn't really pursue it.
Standing back the primary driver of this, I suspect was the realization that most smartphones (not mine) are rather powerful machines with decent CPU and GPU specs and with reasonable amount of ram as well as non volatile storage without considering its Wifi, 5G/LTE and Bluetooth connectivity.
My take would be not to have the embedded OS (Android) offer a desktop mode when docked (wired or wirelessly) with external video, mouse & keyboard etc but for the phone to expose a hypervisor on which the docking environment could run Windows, Linux or whatever.
The user's content stored on the phone could be presented to hosted OSes in any number of ways - eg vfat formatted file system on an accessible block device, CIFS volume, NFS export, Davfs2 etc etc.
Actually even running the native Android on top of a Type 1 hypervisor isn't too silly. The Dom0 could enforce policy (security) for all hosted VMs.
A ghastly thought - in principle a deviant could run Apple's iOS on such an Android phone if the hypervisor could emulate Apple's silicon.
Many years ago, I had a Sony Ericsson phone running Android 2.3.4 that had a micro-HDMI port. If I plugged a USB hub in to the micro USB port using an OTG cable, I could also plug a keyboard and mouse, and if the hub was powered, it would also charge the phone. I was actually surprised that the mouse worked, although I expected a keyboard to work.
I never used it in anger, but I did check that I could use a number of apps, which included an SSH client and the browser. I concluded that at a pinch I could use it to get some work done.
I followed this with a later Sony phone running Android 4.3, that could put video out through the USB port and an appropriate MHL dongle, which again could have a hub plugged in and a keyboard and mouse. Again, I tested it and it worked.
This was before the ability to have multiple windows in Android, so neither of them would really have been comfortable, but in an emergency...
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