Comment by rchaud

2 days ago

Samsung, Motorola and Huawei have had this for years. Samsung DeX is probably the most popular desktop environment of its type, and has been available for 9 years. Plenty of people use it (like myself), but it's too niche of a use case for the masses.

The 2011 Motorola Atrix came with a proprietary dock to connect to. Modern desktop environments can use the USB-C 3.2 DP ports on the phone to provide video out. Lapdock shells are widely available online.

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rchaud

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gambiting  2 days ago

The thing is, Samsung DEX works great but I've never met anyone who has heard of it even among people who have owned nothing but Samsung phones forever. Samsung just sucks at advertising the feature. They should sell a bundle of phone + portable USB-C screen + Bluetooth mouse and keyboard and the thing would sell pretty well I would imagine. But right now no one even knows this exists.

  • rchaud  2 days ago

    The product is perfectly fine as it is. The way I see it, if it's being advertised, it's being monetized behind the scenes. That changes incentives and usually makes the product experience worse. All it has to be is a window manager that supports standard desktop KB shortcuts (CTRL-C, ALT+Tab, etc.)

  • pixel_popping  2 days ago

    I also wouldn't feel safe using Samsung forks for work related stuff where security is very sensitive.

    • rchaud  2 days ago

      DeX is not a fork. It is a UI layer on the phone that activates when you connect to a USB-C display. There is no difference between doing something on your phone and on DeX.

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