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.
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.
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.
Security-wise: True; but Android is a gigantic yet well-oiled ecosystem at this point, from silicon designers to manufacturers to vendors to developers, running on handhelds to TVs to wearables to gaming devices (including AR/VR consoles).
> shame that Chrome OS was subsumed by Android
ChromeOS had a decade but Google is wise focus on just one desktop platform. I don't think it should surprise anybody that a platform with 3bn users & 2mn odd apps won out.
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
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.
It was the Ubuntu 16.04 desktop running in a LXD container. It crashed when the tablet went in out of memory, so I had to be careful with what I was running.
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
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
BTW you don't even need a dock if you have a USB-C monitor with USB and audio ports, which is not that uncommon. The monitor acts like a USB hub, so if you plug in your keyboard and mouse that's your computer essentially
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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
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.
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.
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).
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!
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.
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?
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.
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.
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..
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).
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 :)
> 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.
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.
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.
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!
If it’s the size of my current phone and folds out to be twice as wide, that sounds kind of nice. Except it would be so thin I worry it would be flimsy and there wouldn’t be as much space for battery (which the open screen would use faster) so wouldn’t I get worse battery life?
Unless you make it twice as thick. Then it’s twice as thick.
And so I’m not sure that bigger screen would justify any of that for me. Now if it was three times as wide that might be significantly nice because now you’re approaching like iPad mini size. But that just makes the thinness/thickness problem worse.
If it’s say half the size of my current phone and then unfolds to be the size of my current phone (game boy SP style) I’m not sure that’s really buying me anything either. My phone is fine, I don’t need a twice as thick half as tall version in my pocket that’s not really gonna help me.
I have heard they’re popular with women which makes a certain amount of sense to me. Because if you’re going to just carry your phone in your bag then the fact that it’s twice as thick doesn’t matter that much but you get the bigger screen.
I’m a phone-in-pocket person.
So I don’t know, it’s just not making a lot of sense to me. But like I said I’ve never used one and it may be one of those things where after a couple of days the light would go on and I would totally get it. I questioned the Apple Watch at first and now I love it. But that’s not always how it goes.
> If it’s the size of my current phone and folds out to be twice as wide, that sounds kind of nice. Except it would be so thin I worry it would be flimsy and there wouldn’t be as much space for battery (which the open screen would use faster) so wouldn’t I get worse battery life?
It isn't. I went from Apple's 16 Pro to an Oppo Find N5. Battery size 16 Pro: 3,582mAh. Though in fairness the Oppo is the same size as an iPhone 16 Pro Max, which has 4,685mAh.
Battery size Oppo Find N5: 5600mAh
56% more than my old phone. 20% more than the 16 Pro Max. Silicon carbon batteries.
It's beautiful what can be done if we go with modern technology and not Apple's profit maximising regurgitation of the same same for many many years.
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.
The screen of foldable phones is still smaller than most tablets, and there’s a reason iPads offer something like Stage Manager for (larger) external screens (disregarding for the moment its janky implementation). Meaning, the screen size of foldable phones doesn’t change that much about the usefulness of being able to connect to a desktop-size screen.
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
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.
>The only folks who ever have problems are people who need to be told how to use their devices.
While this may be the case - many iPhone users love their phones (and iOS) for a different reason.
I've been with Android for some time: rooting, custom builds, different launchers, you name it. And it was fun back when I was in my early 20s, when had the time for this and when it was something new (HTC One, the very first model was my last Android phone).
Then I've bought iPhone 6 (I had switched from Arch to macOS few months earlier) and tried a few android phones since.
I simply don't need those "workflows".
I need about a dozen apps (the ones I use almost daily), I want them to be thought through (like Drafts) and I want my OS to work and behave the same way at least 5 years later (not to mention security updates and such).
This is where iPhone delivers and where Android quite often fails. I have iPhone 13 now and I can be sure that even few years from now everything will just work the same way does now.
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.
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.
> mounting an Android device as what appears pretty much as a standard USB drive
AFAIK Google got rid of built-in support for this in Android Jelly Bean. Additional tricks are needed to make later versions of Android behave as a USB Mass Storage device. If it works for you out of the box, I suspect it may be specific to your Android distro.
They're talking about MTP, which is supported by every modern (and old) Android device AFAIK. It's not exactly a USB Mass Storage device, but as long as you're not on a Mac, it behaves basically the same as one.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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.
To be fair, that’s likely because the Android subsystem is a virtual machine - not running multiple sets of system services / CPU emulation on a computer will make it faster pretty much universally.
It's not just the virtualization, ChromeOS has had a lot of work put into performance. The low-end ARM Chromebooks use the same hardware as budget Android devices, and they're noticeably faster. My Android phone uses more RAM doing nothing from a fresh boot than those Chromebooks even have.
Fuchsia as the core makes much more sense. It replaces Linux for a start and completely changes the security model to something a LOT more defendable among a bunch of other benefits.
I worked on Android at Google until 2023 and can 99.999% confirm for you Fuchsia, as the outside understands it is DOA. (i.e. as some sort of next gen OS, and if not that, some kernel that's on track to replace Linux in Android)
Long story short is you can imagine in 2019 there was X amount of engineers, 95% on Android and 5% on what you'd call Fuchsia.
The central argument up top became about why the renegade band that split off from Android/Chrome etc. to do Fuchsia in...early to mid 2010s?...and if it was going to provide a significant step forward. This became framed in terms of "$ of devices shipped", in which case, there was no contest.
Funnily enough this very article is about N dominos down from there (de-investment in Fuchsia, defenestration of head software guy of Android/Chrome/Chrome OS etc., ex. Moto hardware guy is in charge now)
Don't read this comment too closely, I was not in the room. For example, I have absolutely no actual quotes, or relayed quotes, to 100% confirm some set of individuals became focused on # of devices shipped.
Just obsessive enough to track wtf was going on, and on big enough projects, and trustworthy and hard working, and clearly without party or clique, such that I could get good info when asked, as it was clear my only concern was making things that were good and making sure all of Google's products could be part of that story.
Thanks for that insight. Obviously there’s a lot of context in there that isn’t at all clear outside.
One part I find hard to reconcile with all of that is that even just looking at public facing stuff alone it seems to be under VERY active development.
@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.
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.
It's not a tiny minority of people. The karma threshold for flagging is deliberately kept low so this isn't the case.
> This happens all the time where stories get flagged for no reason.
It's not for no reason—it just feels that way when you see flags on an article that you think is a good one for HN.
Judging from what else the same users have flagged, along with the responses you got in this thread, my guess is that they thought the submitted article (https://www.squaredtech.co/googles-desktop-view-android-phon...) wasn't good enough for HN. Indeed, it has the markings of blogspam (content lifted from other sources).
Normally we'd leave the flags alone on a post like this, but the comments in this thread are surprisingly good, so I've turned off the flags and replaced the URL with an earlier article which has the same material and which in fact, it (almost?) looks like the other article was cribbed from.
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.
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).
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:
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.
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).
Have you never heard of categories such as "gaming pcs" or "netbooks" whose name literally describes how people will consume using it. Laptops advertise how long you can consumes using it's battery life in terms of movies and music.
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
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?
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!
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.
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
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=...
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.
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.
> IMO in many ways it had better foundations
Security-wise: True; but Android is a gigantic yet well-oiled ecosystem at this point, from silicon designers to manufacturers to vendors to developers, running on handhelds to TVs to wearables to gaming devices (including AR/VR consoles).
> shame that Chrome OS was subsumed by Android
ChromeOS had a decade but Google is wise focus on just one desktop platform. I don't think it should surprise anybody that a platform with 3bn users & 2mn odd apps won out.
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.
> 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.
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
I think it was introduced with at least the S9+, mine has had DeX since I got it originally.
Just FYI, Dex is really fluid on flagship devices.
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.
It's interesting to hear because Samsung had a Linux feature previously: https://developer.samsung.com/sdp/blog/en/2017/10/18/samsung...
They had Linux on DeX in 2018, killed in 2019. It was a partnership with Canonical
https://9to5google.com/2018/11/09/samsung-linux-on-dex-andro...
It was the Ubuntu 16.04 desktop running in a LXD container. It crashed when the tablet went in out of memory, so I had to be careful with what I was running.
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
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
BTW you don't even need a dock if you have a USB-C monitor with USB and audio ports, which is not that uncommon. The monitor acts like a USB hub, so if you plug in your keyboard and mouse that's your computer essentially
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.
> 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-...
> 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...
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
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.
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.
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).
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!
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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..
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).
Well, MS did make that, sort of.
https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/6/9464639/microsoft-windows...
> 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.
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....
I mean, what I really want is chromebook shaped shell that I slot my phone into for travel with an extended external battery.
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 :)
> 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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
Rumors are Apple will be inventing the folding phone in a year or two.
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!
I am pretty skeptical that I would like the size but I’m certainly interested in seeing what they come up with.
They like to wait until stuff is “ready” to their standard. Android had 3G, 4G, and 5G first. OLED screens too.
Early folders had a lot of issues, but I know a lot of that has been sorted for years.
The size: its a smaller phone that becomes a tablet on demand. It really is the best of both worlds
But is it? That’s what has me wondering.
If it’s the size of my current phone and folds out to be twice as wide, that sounds kind of nice. Except it would be so thin I worry it would be flimsy and there wouldn’t be as much space for battery (which the open screen would use faster) so wouldn’t I get worse battery life?
Unless you make it twice as thick. Then it’s twice as thick.
And so I’m not sure that bigger screen would justify any of that for me. Now if it was three times as wide that might be significantly nice because now you’re approaching like iPad mini size. But that just makes the thinness/thickness problem worse.
If it’s say half the size of my current phone and then unfolds to be the size of my current phone (game boy SP style) I’m not sure that’s really buying me anything either. My phone is fine, I don’t need a twice as thick half as tall version in my pocket that’s not really gonna help me.
I have heard they’re popular with women which makes a certain amount of sense to me. Because if you’re going to just carry your phone in your bag then the fact that it’s twice as thick doesn’t matter that much but you get the bigger screen.
I’m a phone-in-pocket person.
So I don’t know, it’s just not making a lot of sense to me. But like I said I’ve never used one and it may be one of those things where after a couple of days the light would go on and I would totally get it. I questioned the Apple Watch at first and now I love it. But that’s not always how it goes.
> If it’s the size of my current phone and folds out to be twice as wide, that sounds kind of nice. Except it would be so thin I worry it would be flimsy and there wouldn’t be as much space for battery (which the open screen would use faster) so wouldn’t I get worse battery life?
It isn't. I went from Apple's 16 Pro to an Oppo Find N5. Battery size 16 Pro: 3,582mAh. Though in fairness the Oppo is the same size as an iPhone 16 Pro Max, which has 4,685mAh.
Battery size Oppo Find N5: 5600mAh 56% more than my old phone. 20% more than the 16 Pro Max. Silicon carbon batteries.
It's beautiful what can be done if we go with modern technology and not Apple's profit maximising regurgitation of the same same for many many years.
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.
Google pixel folding is great quality, I think you're talking about the first gen folding phones.
In addition Apple would be happy if people started upgrading their phones more frequently.
How does this relates to the submission's "Desktop View"? Genuinely trying to find the connection.
The desktop view is for larger screens, it is somewhat similar to fordable phones.
The screen of foldable phones is still smaller than most tablets, and there’s a reason iPads offer something like Stage Manager for (larger) external screens (disregarding for the moment its janky implementation). Meaning, the screen size of foldable phones doesn’t change that much about the usefulness of being able to connect to a desktop-size screen.
It at least has similar down sides -.-
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
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.
>The only folks who ever have problems are people who need to be told how to use their devices.
While this may be the case - many iPhone users love their phones (and iOS) for a different reason.
I've been with Android for some time: rooting, custom builds, different launchers, you name it. And it was fun back when I was in my early 20s, when had the time for this and when it was something new (HTC One, the very first model was my last Android phone).
Then I've bought iPhone 6 (I had switched from Arch to macOS few months earlier) and tried a few android phones since.
I simply don't need those "workflows".
I need about a dozen apps (the ones I use almost daily), I want them to be thought through (like Drafts) and I want my OS to work and behave the same way at least 5 years later (not to mention security updates and such).
This is where iPhone delivers and where Android quite often fails. I have iPhone 13 now and I can be sure that even few years from now everything will just work the same way does now.
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.
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.
> mounting an Android device as what appears pretty much as a standard USB drive
AFAIK Google got rid of built-in support for this in Android Jelly Bean. Additional tricks are needed to make later versions of Android behave as a USB Mass Storage device. If it works for you out of the box, I suspect it may be specific to your Android distro.
They're talking about MTP, which is supported by every modern (and old) Android device AFAIK. It's not exactly a USB Mass Storage device, but as long as you're not on a Mac, it behaves basically the same as one.
> 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.
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).
skills issue for sure
Plug it into my pc?
What is this 1995?
Why would you want to plug in if you can sync them over Wi-Fi using Syncthing?
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.
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.
Phones also have CPUs, JFYI.
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.
I don't see what else they could mean, really
Too many ads, didn’t read (tma;dr)
> Google Is Catching Up to Samsung DeX
Does anyone use DeX?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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...
Freaking cool. I don't know how I missed/forgot this, having been so immersed in the Windows Phone world. Thanks!
I feel like this is something that could spur Windows/Windows Phone adoption in modern times.
Display connectors were a problem back then. Now you can just use USB C.
The HP Elite x3 had it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Elite_x3 . The phone came with a docking cradle with desktop ports.
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.
As someone who likely never would have bought a windows phone, I sure wish Microsoft would have stuck with it
Is this an AI-generated article? Article about novel UI with no screenshots??
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]
Thanks for that. I hadn't seen a nexdock before.
The article seems to just repeat the first couple of sentences over and over.
....and it's not wireless?! even Android Auto has a wireless mode...
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.
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
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.
> 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...
Canonical is (currently) a multi billion company and there is not a monopoly in phone manufacturers
Welcome to ChromeOS 2.0
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.
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.
To be fair, that’s likely because the Android subsystem is a virtual machine - not running multiple sets of system services / CPU emulation on a computer will make it faster pretty much universally.
It's not just the virtualization, ChromeOS has had a lot of work put into performance. The low-end ARM Chromebooks use the same hardware as budget Android devices, and they're noticeably faster. My Android phone uses more RAM doing nothing from a fresh boot than those Chromebooks even have.
Yup, the android vm is too much for a chrome pc unless it’s a high end device.
I can’t imagine android going faster than chrome at a native level either.
Breaks my heart (worked on Android from 2016-2023, ChromeOS was a revelation. Alas, Efficiency™. (as in salaries, not the things we build))
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.
What’s the point of running fuschia on android? It should be the other way around: android vm on fuschia.
Fuchsia as the core makes much more sense. It replaces Linux for a start and completely changes the security model to something a LOT more defendable among a bunch of other benefits.
I worked on Android at Google until 2023 and can 99.999% confirm for you Fuchsia, as the outside understands it is DOA. (i.e. as some sort of next gen OS, and if not that, some kernel that's on track to replace Linux in Android)
Long story short is you can imagine in 2019 there was X amount of engineers, 95% on Android and 5% on what you'd call Fuchsia.
The central argument up top became about why the renegade band that split off from Android/Chrome etc. to do Fuchsia in...early to mid 2010s?...and if it was going to provide a significant step forward. This became framed in terms of "$ of devices shipped", in which case, there was no contest.
Funnily enough this very article is about N dominos down from there (de-investment in Fuchsia, defenestration of head software guy of Android/Chrome/Chrome OS etc., ex. Moto hardware guy is in charge now)
Don't read this comment too closely, I was not in the room. For example, I have absolutely no actual quotes, or relayed quotes, to 100% confirm some set of individuals became focused on # of devices shipped.
Just obsessive enough to track wtf was going on, and on big enough projects, and trustworthy and hard working, and clearly without party or clique, such that I could get good info when asked, as it was clear my only concern was making things that were good and making sure all of Google's products could be part of that story.
Thanks for that insight. Obviously there’s a lot of context in there that isn’t at all clear outside.
One part I find hard to reconcile with all of that is that even just looking at public facing stuff alone it seems to be under VERY active development.
I count 100 commits in just the past 24 hrs here: https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+log and it’s been at that pace for a LONG time.
Which leads me to ask… what is up with it in your opinion because that’s hard to match up with DOA
Also I wasn’t making up the idea that they were in the process of bringing in this “microfuchsia” VM into Android although it’s purpose is unclear.
@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.
I'm not surprised, it's a horribly written article, like a paragraph of content stretched out over article-length by AI.
Perhaps that's why: two total submissions from this site and both are added by same green account registered 7 days ago.
I agree, can anybody just willy nilly flag any post?
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.
It's not a tiny minority of people. The karma threshold for flagging is deliberately kept low so this isn't the case.
> This happens all the time where stories get flagged for no reason.
It's not for no reason—it just feels that way when you see flags on an article that you think is a good one for HN.
Judging from what else the same users have flagged, along with the responses you got in this thread, my guess is that they thought the submitted article (https://www.squaredtech.co/googles-desktop-view-android-phon...) wasn't good enough for HN. Indeed, it has the markings of blogspam (content lifted from other sources).
Normally we'd leave the flags alone on a post like this, but the comments in this thread are surprisingly good, so I've turned off the flags and replaced the URL with an earlier article which has the same material and which in fact, it (almost?) looks like the other article was cribbed from.
If flag enabling is based on a threshold test, cannot un-flagging also be enabled based on a threshold test?
I'm afraid I don't understand the question. Can you explain a bit further?
In that case perhaps the actual source article could be used: https://www.androidauthority.com/android-desktop-mode-leak-3...
Sure! Changed from https://tech.yahoo.com/phones/articles/first-look-google-unf... now.
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.
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).
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!
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).
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!
that's why i say a phone could be perfect for the job. it's just that current smartphones are stupid.
>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.
strong disagree, computers are built for creation and work, not mindless consumption.
Have you never heard of categories such as "gaming pcs" or "netbooks" whose name literally describes how people will consume using it. Laptops advertise how long you can consumes using it's battery life in terms of movies and music.
"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.
Different things. This about the desktop mode of Dex and not phone to pc mirroring
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
This is for when you connect it to a large screen
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?
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!
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.
Even on a phone, I regularly split my screen vertically to research while writing without swiping back and forth between apps.