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Comment by adrian_b | Hacker News Reader

Motorola was already in my top position in the list of possible upgrades for my old (ASUS) phone, for providing at moderate prices USB 3 connectivity and DisplayPort 1.4 that allows the connection of an external monitor, for a desktop mode.

With this announcement, Motorola has consolidated its top position, making it unlikely for me to choose something else.

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Bear in mind it will solely be future devices which are supported. They're being developed and aren't launched yet.

Any chance of having a finger print scanner on the back of the phone?

I personally really dislike the screen ones. They're slower, less reliable and the location is unnatural.

Mine (really cheap G05) has it on the power button, much better than the back where it used to be on older models. Motorola have been innovative with the UX. It lights up when I pick it up, shake twice to toggle flashlight (extremely useful when looking for dog poop) and so on. Only brand I've considered for about a decade.

Shake to toggle flashlight is the one feature that makes people ask about my phone.

Unfortunately many Motorola phones (even flagship) do NOT do video out.

the MOTOROLA ATRIX [1] paired with its Ubuntu lapdock [2] ... from 15 years ago (2011) would like to disagree!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapdock

Countering "most Motorola phones don't support video out" by going back a decade and a half to find a single example is not the argument-ending line you seem to think it is

Chill dude, I think they were being a little glib

What do you mean desktop mode? I though only Samsung Android phones had that, called Samsung DeX.

Android 16 introduced desktop mode.

The first-party desktop mode that was introduced in Android 16 last year.

https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/06/developer-...

A lot of phones, including latest flagships, don't support this, unfortunately.

Motorolla has had a similar desktop experience for a while. For example my Moto G100 has this feature since 2021. It actually works quite good, I really liked that your touchscreen turns into a mousepad in these modes.

I believe it is called "Motorolla Ready For" the marketing is not great (a bit confusing name if you ask me).

GrapheneOS has hardware-based virtualization on the Pixel 6 and later along with DisplayPort alternate mode on the Pixel 8 and later. It has the standard Android 16 QPR2 desktop mode and Terminal VM management app capable of running GUI applications for other operating systems. We could even add Windows support, but we have much higher priorities for the foreseeable future.

Most mid to high-end ranges from Android OEMs have a DisplayPort video output and basic keyboard plus mouse support. Pixels were late to the party, but it's been there for a long time otherwise.

The functionality used to be really barebones outside of Samsung DeX. Now it's a bit better since it's officially supported by Google.

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