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Comment by jmkni | Hacker News Reader

With USB-C, surely we are at the point where we can plug our phones into a hub with a couple of monitors attached and get a proper desktop environment?

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Samsung Dex does this pretty well, and has been for ages now. It's an undersold feature in my opinion. Samsung used to experiment with using Ubuntu for their desktop environment but they shut that down a while back (I forgot why, I guess it was too much of a pain to maintain).

Microsoft tried to do it with Windows Phone years ago, but phones were way too slow and Windows on ARM was an even worse prospect at the time, so that died too.

I own a Galaxy Tab (an s 8.4?) from 2018 with Dex on Linux (or was it Linux or Dex?) It's a docker container running an Ubuntu 16.04 desktop on the Android kernel. They developed it with Canonical to be able to use the hardware of the tablet to do graphics and probably more. Then Android moved on, Ubuntu moved on and probably they would have had to pay Canonical again to keep it up to date, plus dedicating their own engineers to the project. It was axed and removed from the next update from Samsung.

It worked well but of course Android would kill any Ubuntu process at random if RAM usage reached a certain threshold, so I wouldn't use it for anything heavy. I remember I was able to run a Ruby on Rails project of mine plus emacs. Slower than my laptop but still decent. The real problem was the limited amount of RAM of the tablet and the insecurity deriving from random process terminations.

The sad reality is that market forces don’t want this to happen, since it would cannibalize sales of those other devices. It’s much better for manufacturers to make sure a phone can only do “phone stuff” and a PC can only do “PC stuff”, because then you need to buy both devices.

I think Google is well-positioned to do it. They have experience with ChromeOS already, and running Linux apps on Android should be at least somewhat plausibly deniable. Google doesn't sell laptops either, so they aren't especially worried about the cannibalization.

/describe Pixelbook looks at its shoes.

Google is in the process of making chrome os just another android device

You've literally been able to do this for nearly a decade with most Android phones.

Market forces have included it in every Samsung phone since the S8?

TBH Snapdragons aren't quite there yet. Apple chips on the other hand...

The HP Elite x3 running Windows Phone 10 had a dock that would let you plug in a monitor and peripherals to provide a desktop Windows environment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Elite_x3

If Intel hadn't cancelled their x86 smartphone chip (Broxton?), I wouldn't have been surprised to see an x86 Windows Phone with a desktop mode.

I'm unconvinced. Lots of people are increasingly fine with just phones. My dad I sort of see but I had a co-worker who told me their kid didn't even want a laptop for schoolwork which blew my mind a bit but so it goes.

Any hybrid would be a compromise for me. I do have multiple systems--almost certainly more than I need.

orev is not talking about people. He's talking about market forces. That is, device manufacturing companies.

I don't see who is refusing to sell you a phone with various attachments that make a workable computer (especially given 3rd party providers). I just bought such with an iPad. You could do something along the same lines with an iPhone I suppose but I'd probably find it unsatisfactory. Still on the fence whether the iPad is still a fully satisfactory companion device for traveling in general.

In the Apple ecosystem, the one “refusing to sell you…” is Apple, and not only the required peripherals but also not making the software work that way. Because if they did, then you wouldn’t need to buy a Mac.

Macs are not especially relevant to Apple revenue at this point. iPad plus magnetic keyboard is getting pretty close. Still not sure that better multitasking would push me over the edge to not wanting a MacBook for serious day-to-day multitasking work.

I do think they're trending in that direction but I actually like that they're not pushing people faster than feels comfortable. I expect to see a convergence of iPads and at least MacBook Airs but we're not quite there yet.

> who told me their kid didn't even want a laptop for schoolwork which blew my mind a bit but so it goes

Some people insist on self sabotaging. It's sad.

Seems pretty judgmental even if I'm not really in a position to weigh in on whether it's a particularly bad idea or not.

If you're in school you will have to write papers. It is objectively a worse experience to do so on a phone than on a full sized keyboard and screen.

A piece of paper and any kind of pencil will do just fine for writing papers. There is no need for a laptop.

Don't know what schools typically require these days. But I generally agree that requiring laptops, especially in younger grades, seems unnecessary.

>a co-worker who told me their kid didn't even want a laptop for schoolwork

It's not like kids ever wanted computers for schoolwork in general...

They absolutely did. Back in the early 2000 everyone in my friend group would tell their parents that they needed a powerful PC for schoolwork and that's how they got gaming PCs.

Yes, so still: it's not like kids ever wanted computers for schoolwork in general.

Saying they wanted computers for schoolwork, is another matter.

Sure, that's true.

Growing up without access to a proper computer still seems weird to me. How do we expect kids to build computing literacy?

Certainly I never developed any computer literacy growing up--and, indeed in college. And I worked in the computer industry most of my adult life.

I'm not sure how to interpret your comment. Do you think kids should be exposed to proper computers or do you think it doesn't matter and can always be picked up later.

I don't think this true. Microsoft really, really tried to make UWP a real thing so you could buy a Windows Phone and turn it into a PC by adding it to a docking station, and consumers were totally uninterested. I've never seen or heard of anybody using Samsung Dex in any real capacity apart from a party trick either. I think lack of phone-PC convergence is a bottom-up phenomenon, not a top-down one.

It would have helped if they waited that the market would grew beyond 10%, and didn't keep messing up the whole development experience, that even on Windows desktop made everyone besides Windows team lose interest.

Now they want to sell services, while Apple and Google control all major endpoints.

My old Samsung S20FE can plug into my office-issue Dell monitor and give me full Dex desktop (also using the second screen) and connect to the keyboard and mouse that stay wirelessly connected to the USB ports on the screens. IIRC it also made use of the headset plugged in via USB.

If I was a student with Chromebook-style needs (browser-based tools) it would be worth considering instead of a laptop.

Single monitor is probably doable by the majority of phones on the market, but multi-monitor is another story. I’m not sure that most phone SoCs have the hardware to support more than one, which would mean that additional monitors would need to be driven via software ala DisplayLink which might make the phone get hot and negatively impact battery health.

The other issue is demand. I suspect that the number of people who’d like their phone to double as a computer is actually rather small — non-technophiles just do everything on their phone these days, and increasingly the main reason anybody keeps around a computer is for more “big iron” sorts of use cases that are too demanding for smartphones. The market for a converged computer-phone device is basically down to people whose needs would be served by a Chromebook, but would prefer an external monitor and keyboard which is rather niche.

I'd be somewhat interested. Single-monitor is good enough for most people for home computing stuff. And touch-screen interaction on a tiny screen sucks for anything like spreadsheets, composing documents, dealing with PDFs, or dense forms.

I would probably come down to separate devices however, in the interests of security and continuity. A phone is much more likely to be lost or stolen than a computer on a desk at home. I keep my really important stuff on my computer, and try to keep my phone as disposable as possible.

Another thing in favor of separate devices, is that for lightweight usecases that benefit from traditional desktop UX (like spreadsheets, as you mentioned) even cheap PCs have been extreme overkill for the better part of two decades at this point — the latest greatest desktop hardware is barely better than a mid-late Core 2 Duo booted off an SSD for productivity.

One could buy a cheap mini-PC and put some flavor of Linux on it and it’d serve office software duty for upwards of 10 years without issue. Even accounting for FOSS aftermarket Android distros, smartphone hardware doesn’t have that kind of longevity.

My ancient pixel 4a can use a hub for a keyboard and mouse, and a icro projector. It has a chrooted fedora running on it. This has all worked for pretty much as long as android has been a thing, though the display had ro wait on usb-c.

I mean I have a 10 year old MacBook laptop I use downstairs in the kitchen as a "desktop." It's just fine for most purposes. If I needed to pay $10K for such a device and replace it with my phone and a hub sure. But same thing with Xbox. Computers by themselves are mostly not that expensive or bulky.

Me, I already have a laptop. I'm used to working on a laptop. I'm used to having 2 screens in the desktop setup (one being the laptop's). I actively use that fact.

Using only one device would mean a downgrade in my work setup - one screen less. Moreover, if I'm traveling and have to work somewhere on the fly, a laptop offers a decent keyboard and tolerable screen size by itself. And there is a variety of options on offer (larger screens, lighter laptop, more computing power), so I can pick the optimal one for me.

As such, I don't see a smartphone replacing my daily driver, nor my "planned to work while travelling" driver. Best-case scenario it'd a below-average compromise. But the laptop market offers enough choice that I can get a better compromise for less there.

Im surprised Apple hasn’t done this yet. I thought about this maybe 5-6 years ago as a product idea. My thought was that you had a monitor with a wireless charging pad built into the base, drop you phone on the base and it automatically connects to the monitor and other peripherals and starts charging. You just pick up your phone and leave and it automatically disconnects.

I think other commenters are right that this would cannibalize Apples own products, which is a shame since I think it would be awesome to have a unified computing device.

MacOS already runs on arm64 and the iphone has wireless charging and bluetooth, so I don’t think there is a lot stopping Apple from doing this.

It would not be hard for them to do this, and some apps exist to emulate a desktop environment when you plug the iPhone into a dock and hook it up to a monitor, but it's pretty sad that Apple won't embrace something like this.

Despite the fact that the largest iPhone and smallest iPad are less than 2" difference, the $130 Apple Pencil will not work with an iPhone Pro Max, and both devices run different operating systems with arbitrary features.

One of the biggest complaints about their latest iPad was that it's so powerful yet limited by iPadOS. I feel the same way about my iPhone 16 Pro Max.

Apple wants you to have an iMac as your desktop, a MacBook for your mobile device, an iPad to watch videos, and an iPhone to bring with you.

Contra Microsoft which tried to use Windows as a beachhead to everything, Apple has actually been pretty successful. I do expect to see more convergence over time. But, even if there are self-interested reasons for not sprinting in that direction, I also think there are good reasons for keeping use cases (e.g. phone/consumer/creator) a bit separated in the near-term rather than forcing everyone in one bucket.

I was in a Microsoft event 15-20 years ago. They showed a fantasy video of a construction foreman leaving his house with his phone, casting its contents to different devices (his TV, stereo, car) on the go etc.

I still can't do that with any Microsoft system. I've been able to do it with Apple devices for a good 5-10 years.

Is ipadOS really a distinct OS these days?

I always had the impression it's just iOS with a slightly different configuration.

That's what I was able to do with my Librem 5 in the last few years, so yes. Well, almost - there are two display controllers in that SoC and one of them is limited to the internal screen, so you can't connect "a couple of monitors", just one (4K60Hz).

Plasma, GNOME, Phosh, it all just works.

But we are, for ~6 years now? If you have a Samsung Galaxy phone - the most sold phone models in the world (trades place with Apple sometimes) with 60m+ devices/year sold, just plug it in and there you have it. Full peripherial support, you have a perfect multitasking desktop environment and access the same files - called DeX mode.

And yet, this question is here - somehow no one really uses it or even knows about it.

With respect to hardware only, perhaps. But the OS is still locked down compared to a real desktop OS and the apps are simplified for touch interfaces, and designed for content consumption first and production second.

I can't remember what the project was called, but many years ago I remember seeing a concept for a Linux phone that also doubled as your desktop when plugged into a hub.

Pinephone used to be able to do that a few years ago when I tried.

This was an Ubuntu phone concept back around 2011/2012. Steam Deck can do it, but you have to manually switch to desktop mode.

You're probably thinking of https://www.cnet.com/reviews/motorola-laptop-dock-review/ or https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/6/9464639/microsoft-windows...

Nope, it was a Linux project.

All Samsung Galaxy phones have a built in desktop OS called Dex. I remember plugging my monitor usb-c cable to charge my phone and being blown away when a desktop UI appeared on the monitor

that is pretty cool - wonder if it supports keyboard/mouse too ?

It does. And you can also use the phone screen as trackpad while in Dex mode. It's actually a pretty good desktop environment for Android.

It does.

Every iOS and android device supports mouse and keyboard at this point

DeX is very good, lot of fun to use with a lapdock. However, you need to check if the particular model of phone supports it. Usually it's the more expensive models, so Galaxy S, Galaxy Z Fold/Flip, Galaxy Tab S, and 1 single model of A series, the A90 5G.

https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS10001955/

Works on my S21U. I use it a lot because I have some weird thing where I'll get really tense typing on a touchscreen keyboard, so if I have to type long messages in android-only apps its going on the docking station.

I used to love Dex, but later they removed the support for macOS. It used to work elegantly and android to mac connection was so easy. Being able to take calls, see messages and also file transfer. :)

There was a company named "always innovating" around 2008ish which sold a hybrid of phone/tablet/laptop. Funnily enough, the website still exists [1].

[1] https://www.alwaysinnovating.com/products/smartbook.htm

Ubuntu had a kickstarter but it didn’t succeed.

You just described most Android phones. The features are already there. They are just not that useful for 99% of users.

We’ve been able to do that for quite a while, actually.

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