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Comment by throw9away6 | Hacker News Reader

I don’t really understand why my iPhone can’t just be a desktop. It should just hook up to a dock and turn into a desktop pc. It’s got the power to do everything I do I just need a monitor and keyboard hookup

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Samsung DEX works reasonably well for light office work and browsing. Haven't tried it on anything heavier.

I just need a good terminal, tmux can do the heavy lifting.

If that's really all you need, Termux on Android has you covered.

Any 8-bit microcontroller can power a terminal. That's all you need.

https://juicessh.com/

I've for a budget range Samsung tablet and Samsung dex works great.

Apple doesn't want to build a version of dex. I don't know why, it seems like an excellent fit, but they don't care. It probably has to do with the fact Microsoft's attempt has failed miserably.

If you care about this concept, I'd recommend considering buying a Samsung phone instead of an iPhone. Web browsing, office work, remote desktop, terminal stuff, it all Just Works hooked up to a compatible dock. The desktop feels a bit like a polished Linux environment, with deviations from Windows and macOS in the way things like the launcher works, but it also feels very finished.

The only real limit I've run into is the amount of RAM packed with these devices. The 4GiB of RAM my tablet packs clearly isn't enough to run multiple browser tabs, hires video playback and a fully featured MS Office at the same time, but I also imagine most computers would struggle with 4GiB these days. The S23 contains up to 12GiB of RAM, I imagine that'd be a breeze to work with.

I think people who care can use DeX for real office work today. I imagine the people who care are a minority, though.

motorola in 2011:

https://www.cnet.com/reviews/motorola-laptop-dock-review/

The Atrix was so far ahead of its time. They also worked wonderfully for troubleshooting headless boxes.

Yeah. I'm the same. At some point we're going to get to a point where your 'laptop' is your phone or another 'phone sized thing'. That can be docked into various configurations (laptop configuration: small keyboard with an attached screen. desktop configuration: Monitors, full sized keyboard, mice other peripherals. Or some kind of ultra mobile configuration like this: keyboard pointing device glasses based display.) Or used in a more limited way via a touchscreen (or not!).

At a point some time ago, I think around when Windows mobile OS was still a thing, they released a phone and a dock and you could use it as a desktop for modern apps. It was limited to apps due to architecture but that always seemed like the next step to me for many people. A mobile you could just use as a PC via a dock and run desktop apps on it. I think we will still see it, but it really felt like Microsoft was going to deliver years ago on it.

Sadly Wondows Mobile was already death when HP X3 came to public. The concept was great. CPU and storage in the cellphone, transmitted wireless to the "lapdock". You could plug the things together and load the cellphone from the lapdock battery.

https://www.windowscentral.com/hands-hp-elite-x3-lap-dock

I've purchased a lapdock for my Galaxy Fold precisely for this reason. My MBP is almost 10 years old, and when I looked at buying a new one, I saw that it cost $400 to bump up the RAM from base model 8GB to 16GB.

No thanks! My phone has 12GB; I'm going to be using that for general computing and RDP into my Macbook when I need to.

Because Apple wants you to buy a Mac as well as an iPhone, as well as an iPad. On Android things are a bit better with Samsung's DEX, among others.

Android should be able to do the same basically becoming a chrome book when hooked up to a dock. Slap it into a 11” screen and you get tablet.

This is already the case on most (not all) Android phones with USB-C video out. However, Google has not provided a desktop interface, so OEMs have had to create their own. Currently, Samsung, Motorola, Huawei and LG (RIP) offer desktop UIs when the phone is hooked up to a monitor.

Not only does Google not provide a desktop interface (though there seem to be ways around it with developer options) it seems they disable DisplayPort Alt mode in the Kernel https://twitter.com/MishaalRahman/status/1189998588023234560

This is an example of how Google is mediocre for growing Android ecosystem

https://www.uperfectmonitor.com/products/uperfect-x-13-3-lap...

$300 13.3-inch keyboard monitor turns a smartphone into a laptop

Works on my Androids. And then there is termux which let me feel like it is a real computer.

Maybe it can with this upcoming WWDC? Apple Reality should finally make its appearance

For the same reason you cannot use ab iPad as your Mac Mini display easily and out of the box

Can other tablets behave as a monitor only?

Samsung has a feature to turn it into a WiDi display. It works, but the wireless latency and throughput limitations are a tad annoying. Maybe the Samsung laptops have optimizations for this.

The fact you can use the stylus that comes with the tablet on your PC through the second screen feature is kind of nice, but the wireless issues make using it kind of a bother.

> I don’t really understand why my iPhone can’t just be a desktop.

It can’t?

I mean, I’ve got better desktops (all of which are actually laptops) so I rarely use the phone this way, but my phone can with just an adaptor to plug in HDMI and a keyboard & mouse, and the Apple fans are always telling me how much better iPhones are at everything…

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