Greatest crossover of all time: Microsoft, Samsung preview Android on Windows via Your Phone app Microsoft and Samsung have previewed Android apps running on Windows – or appearing to, since the apps actually run on a connected smartphone, but are viewed and controlled from the PC, a technique called app streaming. Famously, Redmond has canned Windows Phone, but it still wants a presence in mobile, and Android is its best …
I'm still using my Lumia 640 with Windows Mobile 10 for some apps over wifi, even though I use an IPhone 11 as my primary phone and the Lumia no longer has a sim card. I got 5 years of support for the Lumia, versus 1+ for my Samsung Galaxy, and some of the apps just run better on the Lumia than the same app on the IPhone. Even some of the Apple apps drive me crazy on the IPhone - the phone is fast but the apps are really flakey. However, with telemedicine becoming standard, and no Windows mobile telemedicine apps from my physicians, the move to the IPhone was a no brainer. The support issue totally turned me off to Android.
>> pretty website despite the abandonment
Hmmm... guess I missed that detail.
Seems like just yesterday I was reading about Continuum and thinking it was "almost there".
Which meant I could foresee it being the compelling reason for finally moving on from my old "clamshell" to a "smart" phone.
Guess it will still be a while before I'm tempted again.. if ever.
"briefly shown at Unpacked, is the ability to use the forthcoming Galaxy Tab S7 as a second screen for a Windows 10 PC."
Funny that - I'm currently doing exactly that, using spaceDesk, on a Sony tablet (Xperia Z4 and have used it on my Z5C phone too).
Its a bit slow over wi-fi, but perfectly usable when USB-Tethered.
Hate it when large manufacturers try to sell something already around as 'theirs' or 'new'.
So you have Windows, and want access to lots of Android specific apps, now can you by hanging a Galaxy device off it. Or you could run them natively on the device you just bought and skip the screen, and skip all the complexity of the connections.... I wonder how that will pan out!
The core things with the Tab S7+, are :
a) Good: finally a bigger screen!
b) Good: top spec processor (except it will probably come with Samsungs own baked processor outside the USA)
c) Bad: Dumb ass pen placement hanging off the back, like, who thinks that that's a 'convenient' place to put a stylus? Hidden round the back so you cannot lie the tablet flat.
d) Bad: Keyboard now has a trackpad, because despite having a touch screen and a stylus, somehow you want a terrible way to manipulate a mouse cursor which has limited use in Android because Android doesn't treat mouse clicks as touches for apps that don't specifically support mice????
e) Bad: Trackpad on case means the screen is further away from the eye, negating the advantage of the bigger screen.
f) Bad: Multiwindow still requires set up. I expect to have icons in the launcher that launch a full layout of multiple apps. I do not expect piss around splitting and rearranging apps each time I want to run more than one. (click icon1), launches {App1, App2, App3, Floating App 4}, click icon2, launches {App1, App5, Floating 6}. I don't want to piss around splitting up the screen each time I want my messaging set to run, or my stock set to run...
g) Bad: Still acts like a phone. Ring ring, and the whole screen turns into a phone. WTF?? It's a tablet, they will use it with a headset, the phone should popup in the corner on speakerphone or headset. When I'm talking to someone I might have a browser or editor open, perhaps a maps, perhaps other apps, the phone app should be the minor of that, staying in the corner.
h) Bad: Can you really not do a better multi-window. One that can support more than the physical screen space? FFS, you could divide the screen up into strips, and if there is more than 3 on the screen edge-skewed some so I can flip over to them like a deck of cards. Drag them down to latch them to the bottom of the screen to keep them full, now that's latched, it stays like a full card, I can flip to others in my queue and latch the ones I'm working with. If you don't like interfaces like that, then something else, BUT SOMETHING OTHER THAN CRAPPY TILES THAT THE USER HAS TO SETUP EACH AND EVERY TIME.
Same old Android problems:
Apps life cycle s second guessed by the OS, it guesses when you're done with an app, or when you want to keep it running. False positives, false negatives. It's still shit.
Keeps forcing apps to be dinky little phone apps. Low memory constraints.
Expects apps to adjust to the screen space available, instead of window size adjusted to apps interface. Hence few useful tablet apps, because this idea does not work.
I expect to be able to run phone apps in vertical strips of a landscape tablet, and landscape tablet apps in zoomed-out or scrolled window on a phone. All apps on all devices, the OS needs to fix them up.
I expect a mouse to behave like a finger touching the screen if the app doesn't support mice. It's the OS's job to sit between the app and the device, not the app to change drastically for every device if it does't want/need to. Google or Samsung need to do some major rethinking here. Years of failure does not mean it needs to fail.
So in essence, I am the target market for this Tab S7+, power users for Android. I currently use lots of tablets and UDP between them to get a decent amount of screen space to work with. It's a big sucky hack, and I don't see anything coming out soon. Also their UDP connection, even over the LAN isn't reliable. Yet its reliable to the PC! That's a bug nobody has fixed because, well, UDP isn't guaranteed right? So why bother fixing it?
So what you are saying is you are fed up with an OS that is at a technical level Windows 95 (plug and prey) and now want Windows 10 level of just works, but with all the 25billlion apps in the Google store that you only use 5 of and Google to log every mouse click and word you say.
That might be a while and you may need to buy at least three ore tablets before you get there, because, you know, Android really is just for Christmas and new jsut works Android will not be supported on last years kit.
DeX on WIN10 is a total piece of crap! After years this is still beta! First connectivity problems, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't – Sammy even foresaw that with a recurring tip to reinstall the Samsung driver if it doesn't connect. Second you can't resize the virtual desktop other than with their predefined proportions. Third, even though Android handles windowed apps with free resizing nicely (even on the phone – long press in the task switcher) you must close the app and restart it to display on DeX. Fourth I only just figured out: it works well only on the laptop's screen – at home that's usually closed and I use an external monitor, on which DeX regularly gets confused about its layout, making clicks go at things you don't see. Fifth, in full-screen both DeX's toolbar as well as the app's "title-bar" slide in one over the other, which is not too bad. But the app's quickly disappears again, even if you're already hovering it with the mouse. And when you do manage to click the app's unmaximize button, it also clicks whatever button the app has under that spot. %&@$!!!
Like all Samsung software, it generated constant pop-up ads. Connect to Linux desktop - advert to link to Windows. Connect to car - same advert. Connect to camera - MY CAMERA CAN NOT RUN WINDOWS but the advert popped up anyways.
Package Disabler Pro is pretty much required to make a Samsung phone work.
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