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Comment by _trampeltier | Hacker News Reader

I allway wondered why there is nothing like that. Also why DEX is not pushed more. I'm still waiting for something like HP tried with there Elite X3 phone. Just connect my phone to a notebook and just use the display and keyboard from the notebook, while the data and CPU is used from the phone.

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Yep, I'm currently using DeX a lot with my NexDock but mostly in anticipation of getting my Librem 5 and Phosh working better as a daily driver. This has been my dream for a long time, and it finally feels so close.

A few things:

- Having to dig out a cable to dock to the NexDock each time is a bit cumbersome. I have a small one but it's still one more thing to manage/keep with the dock. A mounting arm on the lapdock with something like Apple's MagSafe (wireless charging+NFC to initiate a Miracast connection) would be very nice

- The available lapdocks right now... aren't great. The one with the best touchpad I've found is the Elite x3 lapdock, but Samsung phones don't seem to be compatible with it. Works with my PinePhone though, so it's the one I hope I'll be able to use with the Librem 5. (This is something I expect would be improved if lapdocks gained popularity)

That aside, though... connecting my phone to a dock and using it as my computer feels super futuristic and I'm loving it so far.

The HP Elite lapdock works well with Dex on the Note8 and Note 10. Samsung SW used to just mirror the phone display, but some Android update allowed Dex over any detected HDMI connection and has been working well since.

But these days generally prefer to run Dex on Windows instead of carrying another device. Would love to see Dex on Linux happening officially. The workaround, although admirable, seemed too clunky to try [1]

1 https://www.technipages.com/android-accessing-samsung-dex-mo...

Ah, interesting - it doesn't work at all on my S20 which was pretty disappointing. I've heard something changed with the update to Android 10 on these.

The DeX client on Windows is interesting, I tried it briefly since I still have one Windows machine lying around. I think overall I still prefer the idea of having my phone be the brains and docking to effectively dumb terminals though, provided there are high-quality docks out there I can use. That's also provided the phone/software is powerful and flexible enough though... DeX isn't that for my personal needs, but some of the upcoming Linux phones/DEs might be.

thanks, sounds like backwards progress

In a similar vein, Microsoft's "Your Phone" app now supports screen sharing between PC and Samsung Android devices

I tried loading messages, etc. in Windows with "Your Phone" a few months ago with a Pixel 2, and couldn't get a single thing to work.

Conveniently, very shortly thereafter, I became aware of messages.google.com and now texting is much less of a PITA...

Works quite well for me. I actually use it for both text messages and taking calls on a daily basis.

Last time I set it up on my Pixel 2 it took a few app clears to get it going, along with doing the initial setup on the same wifi network.

It did end up working great but no one here uses SMS (WhatsApp is practically a monopoly), I already had Google Photos for photo sync, and apps/screen sharing was Samsung-only.

It works perfectly for my S10. I think I read somewhere that only Samsungs are supported right now.

Ive used dex on my note 5. It works very well. One annoyance though is the connection/disconnection process should be more streamlined. When I leave my desk to wander around im always taking my phone with me but of course I would leave my laptop behind if I was using that instead. With my phone it was very annoying to disconnect, close things on my phone so it isnt eating battery, just to come back and have everything be out of wack.

DEX is pretty handy... Would love to see one of the open source phone oses have similar functionality.

>I allway wondered why there is nothing like that.

ChromeOS runs Android apps.

Not directly, it uses a secondary kernel in a container to run the whole Android stack alongside ChromeOS.

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