What I've been searching for... almost
I'm going to be in the minority here but I've been researching this exact scenario and I can see its potential. Premium phones are now up in the £1,000 territory and they are completely over-spec'd for the vast majority of users: the OnePlus 5 Midnight Black has 8GB of RAM! If we're paying so much money for so much power, let's put it to better use.
I can imagine a few scenarios where it would be useful to quickly plug in a screen, roll out the Bluetooth keyboard and do 20 minutes proper desktoping. But Samsung's announcement fails in one significant area: DeX.
The S8, S8 Plus and Note8 all come with DisplayPort Alt Mode via USB-C. This allows the phone's very capable GPU to directly drive an external monitor. The phones also have Power Delivery over USB-C so they can even POWER the monitor. Carrying something like the ASUS ZenScreen ( https://www.asus.com/us/Monitors/MB16AC/ ) means you literally need a single USB-C cable and a Bluetooth keyboard and you're up and running. This setup keeps your mobile mobile. But, at present, the ZenScreen will only mirror your phone's screen and, due to the 18.5:9 phone screen, you'll get some significant black bars top and bottom.
To get the full-screen, full desktop effect, Samsung wants you to use DeX. And DeX requires wall power. And DeX only has HDMI out so your monitor also requires wall power. That's a whole heap of unnecessary cables to achieve the same thing. You can't just dive into a coffee shop and get up and running in a rush, you've got to search for that illusive wall socket and then spend 3 minutes cabling it all together. No one is going to do that.
I welcome Samsung's announcement to support Linux but instead of force-feeding us DeX, I would like Samsung to recognise that these are MOBILE devices and any desktop experience needs to be mobile as well. The technology is all in place - the powerful device, the true potential of USB-C - we just need the monitor to behave as it should without requiring DeX.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
