I was hoping that eventually smartphones would evolve to do everything. Especially when things like Samsung Dex were intorduced, it looked to me like maybe in the future phones could replace desktops, running a full desktop OS when docked and some simplified mobile UI + power saving when in mobile mode.
there is an official android desktop mode, I tried it and it isn’t great ofc but my phone manufacturer (oneplus) has clearly put no work into making it functional
Yeah whatever happened to that? That was such a good idea and could have been absolutely game changing if it was actually marketed to the people who would benefit the most from it
I used it for a while when I worked two jobs. Is clock out of job 1 and had an agreement with them to be allowed to use the screen and input devices at my desk for job 2. Then I’d plug in my Tab S8 and get to work, instead of having to carry to chunky laptops.
So it still exists! What I noticed is that a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 feels underpowered and that Android, and this is the bigger issue, does not have a single browser that works as a full fledged desktop version. All browser I tested has some shortcomings, especially with drag and drop or context menus or whatever. Like things work but you’re constantly reminded that you’re running a mobile os. Like weird behavior or oversized context menus or whatever.
I wish you could lunch into a Linux vm instead of Dex UI. Or for Samsung to double down on the concept. The Motorola Atrix was so ahead of it’s time. Like your phone transforming into your tablet, into your laptop, into your desktop. How fucking cool is that?
Apple would be in a prime position, they’re entire ecosystem is now ARM based and they have the chips with enough power. But it’s not their style to do something cool to threaten their bottom line. Why sell one phone when you can sell phone, laptop, tablet, desktop separately?
Or just something like Termux, a terminal emulator for Android. Example screenshot (XFCE desktop over VNC server), I didn’t know what to fit in there:
Full desktop apps, running natively under Android. For better compatibility Termux also has proot-distro (similar to chroot) where you can have… let me copy-paste
Though there is apparently some performance hit. I just prefer Android, but maybe you could run even full LibreOffice under some distro this way.
If it can be done by Termux, then someone like Samsung could definitely make something like that too, but integrated with the system and with more software available in their repos.
What’s missing from the picture but is interesting too is NGINX server (reverse proxy, lazy file sharing, wget mirrored static website serving), kiwix-serve (serving ZIM files including the entire Wikipedia from SD card) and Navidrome (music server).
And brought to any internet-connected computer via Cloudflare QuickTunnel (because it doesn’t need account nor domain name). The mobile data upload speed will finally matter, a lot.
You get the idea, GNU+Linux. And Android already has the Linux kernel part.
I was hoping that eventually smartphones would evolve to do everything. Especially when things like Samsung Dex were intorduced, it looked to me like maybe in the future phones could replace desktops, running a full desktop OS when docked and some simplified mobile UI + power saving when in mobile mode.
But no, I only have a locked-down computer.
there is an official android desktop mode, I tried it and it isn’t great ofc but my phone manufacturer (oneplus) has clearly put no work into making it functional
Yeah whatever happened to that? That was such a good idea and could have been absolutely game changing if it was actually marketed to the people who would benefit the most from it
I used it for a while when I worked two jobs. Is clock out of job 1 and had an agreement with them to be allowed to use the screen and input devices at my desk for job 2. Then I’d plug in my Tab S8 and get to work, instead of having to carry to chunky laptops.
So it still exists! What I noticed is that a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 feels underpowered and that Android, and this is the bigger issue, does not have a single browser that works as a full fledged desktop version. All browser I tested has some shortcomings, especially with drag and drop or context menus or whatever. Like things work but you’re constantly reminded that you’re running a mobile os. Like weird behavior or oversized context menus or whatever.
I wish you could lunch into a Linux vm instead of Dex UI. Or for Samsung to double down on the concept. The Motorola Atrix was so ahead of it’s time. Like your phone transforming into your tablet, into your laptop, into your desktop. How fucking cool is that?
Apple would be in a prime position, they’re entire ecosystem is now ARM based and they have the chips with enough power. But it’s not their style to do something
coolto threaten their bottom line. Why sell one phone when you can sell phone, laptop, tablet, desktop separately?Or just something like Termux, a terminal emulator for Android. Example screenshot (XFCE desktop over VNC server), I didn’t know what to fit in there:
Full desktop apps, running natively under Android. For better compatibility Termux also has proot-distro (similar to chroot) where you can have… let me copy-paste
Though there is apparently some performance hit. I just prefer Android, but maybe you could run even full LibreOffice under some distro this way.
If it can be done by Termux, then someone like Samsung could definitely make something like that too, but integrated with the system and with more software available in their repos.
What’s missing from the picture but is interesting too is NGINX server (reverse proxy, lazy file sharing, wget mirrored static website serving), kiwix-serve (serving ZIM files including the entire Wikipedia from SD card) and Navidrome (music server).
And brought to any internet-connected computer via Cloudflare QuickTunnel (because it doesn’t need account nor domain name). The mobile data upload speed will finally matter, a lot.
You get the idea, GNU+Linux. And Android already has the Linux kernel part.