There is heavy work underway in fuchsia currently to provide Linux kernel comparability via a subsystem they call starnix.
They are already I believe looking at running a version of fuchsia in a vm on Android.
Then there was also a lot of talk about the androidification of ChromeOS.
It sure looks like we are moving towards some kind of cross device OS that is distinctly Google’s without Linux in the future.
0: https://www.androidauthority.com/android-desktop-mode-leak-3550321/source for planned integration: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/392521081?utm_source=...
What is this 1995?
The whole point of having USB C phones is to connect to desktop docks and get full featured computers. Instead we have muzzled devices.
I would love something that I can use and maybe even use an RDP on, to function as a full desktop computer.
But like all common sense improvements, some come just too late after the boat has sailed.
I can easily see the future of personal computing being a mobile device with peripherals that use its compute and cloud for anything serious. be that airpods, glasses, watches, or just hooking that device up to a larger screen.
theres not a great reason for an individual to own processing power in a desktop, laptop, phone, and glasses when most are idle while using the others.
I still will prefer the form factor of a laptop for anything serious though; screen, speakers, keyboard.
Yes you can get peripherals for a phone, yes I have tried that, no they're not good. Though perhaps with foldable screens this could change in the future.
I think we've seen this before. Back before phones were "smart" there was one (Nokia, maybe?) that you could put on a little dock into which you could plug a keyboard and monitor.
Obviously, it didn't take off. Perhaps it was ahead of its time. Or, as you say, it wasn't done well at the time.
Phones accepting Bluetooth keyboard connections was very common back in my road warrior (digital nomad) days, but the screen was always the annoyance factor. Writing e-mails on my SonyEricsson on a boat on the South China Sea felt like "the future!"
Slightly related, I built most of my first startup with a Palm Pilot Ⅲ and an attached keyboard. Again, though, a larger screen would have been a game changer.
The first modern thing like this that I can recall is the 2011 Android-based Motorola Atrix phone[1] that presented a DeX-like desktop (well before DeX!).
It used an Ubuntu-based desktop. It was really, really good, but never got traction.
Anyway I could happily get a couple more years out of as a main PC, then it will probably have a few years in it as a hand-me-down or tv computer.
That said, I generally agree that, I mean, we’re going to get phones anyway so it is nice to get something useful out of them.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...
Really, the compute on a phone has been good enough for at least a decade now once we got USB C. We're still largely doing on our phones and laptops the same things we were doing in 2005. I'm surprised it took this long
I'm happy this is becoming a real thing. I hope they'll also allow the phone's screen to be used like a trackpad. It wouldn't be ideal, but there's no reason the touchscreen can't be a fully featured input device.
I'm fully agreed with you on the wasted processing power-- I think we'll eventually head toward a model of having one computing device with a number of thin clients which are locally connected.
The phone just becomes the processing power; essentially an ARM laptop with all of the peripherals external.
I currently using Pixel 9 Pro XL (512GiB) and I imagine it's got more compute power than my ageing 2019 XPS 13.
Conversely, I'm not entirely sure what the use-case is. It couldn't replace my work-laptop with a 20-core CPU and 64GiB of RAM and ARC GPU, running Ubuntu/Gnome that I can also connect to a couple of monitors, keyboard, mouse, speakers, webcam, and more with a single cable via a docking station; and if I was going to carry the peripherals needed to do this with my phone, when on the go, I'd just carry a laptop, like I do now.
Curious to hear what the use-case is for people with these desktop/phone crossovers. If it's to cover the use-case where I haven't brought a laptop with me, forgotten it, didn't bring it for weight or whatever; where am I supposed to find these peripherals to use?
> This happens all the time where stories get flagged for no reason.
It's not for no reason—it just feels that way when you see flags on an article that you think is a good one for HN.
Judging from what else the same users have flagged, along with the responses you got in this thread, my guess is that they thought the submitted article (https://www.squaredtech.co/googles-desktop-view-android-phon...) wasn't good enough for HN. Indeed, it has the markings of blogspam (content lifted from other sources).
Normally we'd leave the flags alone on a post like this, but the comments in this thread are surprisingly good, so I've turned off the flags and replaced the URL with an earlier article which has the same material and which in fact, it (almost?) looks like the other article was cribbed from.
I've swapped dozens of users from iOS to Android in the last year or so and nobody has had issues. Over the years I've helped hundreds of people migrate. Most everyone really likes the freedom to use different apps or workflows.
The only folks who ever have problems are people who need to be told how to use their devices. Choices confuse them so android is overwhelming, which is understandable. That's where iOS excels. iOS dictates how users can do things, which works for some people but also atrophies people's understanding of technology. People learn to do as they're told, not how to think about what's going on. Apple's walled garden makes people worse at technology.
Also sounds like you bought a garbage bargain android device. Idk how something can barely work as a camera/powerbank unless user error is present.
It felt so close already back then, sluggish, but still usable. But that initial implementation was running some in-house version of Ubuntu with a custom kernel (if I remembered it correctly).
I just wish this becomes a reality much sooner then later. Especially if I can have my dev environment on some remote VPS with either tunneling, github code spaces or Azure DevBox
It’s what Stage Manager on iPads should have been: a regular, boring laptop mode to make multitasking on a large tablet screen usable without Apple unnecessarily trying to put their own unique spin on it.
AFAIK Google got rid of built-in support for this in Android Jelly Bean. Additional tricks are needed to make later versions of Android behave as a USB Mass Storage device. If it works for you out of the box, I suspect it may be specific to your Android distro.
There have been multiple attempts at this over the years.
https://liliputing.com/5-laptop-docks-that-let-you-use-a-sma...
What I’d really like is a personal computer I can plug into a screen to work, then carry with me when I’m done. That would be a real step forward in personal computing. It would make laptops unnecessary.
What may shift the balance is that slowly but surely USB-C docks are becoming more common, on their own terms, not related to cell phones. At some point we may pass a critical threshold where there's enough of them that selling a phone that can just natively use any USB-C dock you've got lying around becomes a sufficient distinguishing feature that people start looking for it. Even just treating it as a bonus would be a start.
I've got two docks in my house now; one a big powerful one to run the work-provided laptop in a more remote-work-friendly form factor, and fairly cheap one to turn my Steam deck into a halfway-decent Switch competitor (though "halfway-decent" and no more; it's definitely more finicky). We really ought to be getting to the point that a cell phone with a docked monitor, keyboard, & mouse for dorm room usage (replacing the desktop, TV, and if whoever pulls this off plays their cards right, the gaming console(s)) should start looking appealing to college students pretty soon here. The docks themselves are rapidly commoditizing if they aren't there already.
Once it becomes a feature that we increasingly start to just expect on our phones, then maybe the "notebook-like" case for a cell phone starts to look more appealing as an accessory. We've pretty much demonstrated it can't carry itself as its own product.
That would probably start the clock on the "notebook" as its own distinct product, though it would take years for them to finally be turned into nothing but shells for cell phones + a high-end, expensive performance-focused line that is itself more-or-less the replacement for desktops, which would themselves only be necessary for high-end graphics or places where you need tons and tons of storage and you don't want 10 USB-C drives flopping around separately.
I wish there was a phone-laptop-dock solution that wasn't as expensive as an equivalent Chromebook. My phone is more than powerful enough to act as a travel laptop, yet its potential is constrained by a small touch screen..
https://www.androidpolice.com/android-15-linux-terminal-app/
As linked somewhere else in the thread, Google wants to extend it to run (non-Android) Linux desktop apps besides Android apps. So once this is refined, plugging in an Android phone will give you a general-purpose desktop.
Exciting times!
Long story short is you can imagine in 2019 there was X amount of engineers, 95% on Android and 5% on what you'd call Fuchsia.
The central argument up top became about why the renegade band that split off from Android/Chrome etc. to do Fuchsia in...early to mid 2010s?...and if it was going to provide a significant step forward. This became framed in terms of "$ of devices shipped", in which case, there was no contest.
Funnily enough this very article is about N dominos down from there (de-investment in Fuchsia, defenestration of head software guy of Android/Chrome/Chrome OS etc., ex. Moto hardware guy is in charge now)
Don't read this comment too closely, I was not in the room. For example, I have absolutely no actual quotes, or relayed quotes, to 100% confirm some set of individuals became focused on # of devices shipped.
Just obsessive enough to track wtf was going on, and on big enough projects, and trustworthy and hard working, and clearly without party or clique, such that I could get good info when asked, as it was clear my only concern was making things that were good and making sure all of Google's products could be part of that story.
I wonder if we'll see USB-C docks for phones with fans blowing at the device for improved thermals.
If they nail the Linux container UX as well as ChromeOS it would motivate me to buy a top-tier device rather than my sluggish Fairphone 4, right now I don't see the usecase other than good camera.
Imagine thst a large userbase could just skip the laptop and desktop in favor of a USB-C dock and a decent display :)
Since I got my hands on a Daylight Computer, I have basically been doing the same thing but with a tablet Android environment instead of DeX. It's been nice, but I would love a nicer window manager when I have a keyboard and mouse connected.
And you have the bonus that with a Pixel you can remove big tech from the equation when needed with GrapheneOS.
That said, I would only recommend people to buy Pixel or Samsung A5x or up. They are the only Android phones that have reliable monthly updates [1], plus they are the only two brands that are not vague about having a truly separated secure enclave (Titan M2/Knox Vault respectively). Other vendors don't really talk about it and probably only use ARM TrustZone.
[1] Pixel is the only phone that gets them really on time, but with Samsung it's normally within a month on A5x and the flagships.
Honestly I'd like to see Windows 11 running under this as well, but that seems incredibly unlikely.
Given that all the compute and all the data is on the cloud, there is little point in making ways for users to do clever interconnect things with their local devices.
Just one example article, using a chroot environment:
https://www.nextpit.com/turn-your-android-device-into-a-linu...
But Ubuntu touch, and other native linux phone installs have touted desktop mode over the years.
The h/w 10 years ago was marginal at performing this task, and the non-corporate OSes were, and are, actively suppressed by goggle and the rest of the corporate "phone" development industry. This is an almost identical scenario as M$ dominating the PC manufacturing business, even though they didn't make the h/w.
But this serves as another typical example of how long ago this type of feature could have been available if every new innovation didn't have to be vetted from the perspective of vendor benefit, instead of advancing on the basis of user benefit.
Devices with hardware keyboards were easier to use for creation (especially writing) and more of the software was focused on creation because of the more limited media processing capabilities of those devices (e.g. less processing power, less memory, more restricted media codecs at that time).
Obviously the trend didn't take off
Apple in particular will get to deal with all the negative PR when people buy their $2000 iPhone Fold and online reports come flooding in for all of the week 1 display failures.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/samsung-dex-first-impre...
I run my S23 Ultra with a pair of XReal One's, and a folding Bluetooth keyboard (DeX let's you use your phone as a touchpad). It is really amazing in widescreen mode sitting in a coffee shop, reading through technical documents and answering work email. When I'm done, it can all fold up and fit in a (spacious) pair of cargo shorts.
I think Samsung has played the long game on DeX, with an eye towards their collaborative XR glasses with Google next year. As great as XReal has been, I am eager to see a "first-party" solution.
Are the Xreal One's that much of a step forward that you can use it for serious work? Even on my Quest Pro I find it just on the edge of being too annoying to do coding-work. Web browsing is decent.
And second question, worth buying the One or waiting for the One Pros?
This is true for almost all computers. That doesn't mean you can't use a computer built for consumption for creation.
Still in the "smart" era, but the Motorola Atrix allowed that, but with its own laptop form factor dock.
https://www.cnet.com/culture/how-does-the-motorola-atrix-4g-...
While this may be the case - many iPhone users love their phones (and iOS) for a different reason.
I've been with Android for some time: rooting, custom builds, different launchers, you name it. And it was fun back when I was in my early 20s, when had the time for this and when it was something new (HTC One, the very first model was my last Android phone).
Then I've bought iPhone 6 (I had switched from Arch to macOS few months earlier) and tried a few android phones since.
I simply don't need those "workflows".
I need about a dozen apps (the ones I use almost daily), I want them to be thought through (like Drafts) and I want my OS to work and behave the same way at least 5 years later (not to mention security updates and such).
This is where iPhone delivers and where Android quite often fails. I have iPhone 13 now and I can be sure that even few years from now everything will just work the same way does now.
I’ve always wondered if this kind of thing is actually that useful, but it’s not even an option for me because of the above.
Seems surprising Google didn’t act on this earlier. But maybe they didn’t want to cannibalize the Chromebooks?
I get the feeling very very few people know this exists at all on some Samsung phones. I’ve asked some tech-y people with Samsungs about it before and they didn’t even know it existed.
The problem is, the OS is very limiting. The file manager of iOS is extremely dumbed down, even Firefox doesn't work properly on it, and desktop mode with stage manager is just stupid. So yeah, it's not a success so far.
Android though feels more open, so I would give it a try of their desktop mode isn't stupid. Firefox on Android is fully functional at least and that's a great start!
An M4 Mac is way more powerful than an iPhone 16, but the iPhone is powerful enough to prove a much better experience on normal tasks compared to what that 2010 phone could at the time.
Basically I think everything has enough headroom that it’s not the compromise it would’ve been before. The biggest constraints on an iPhone’s performance are the battery and cooling. If you’re plugged in the battery doesn’t matter. And unless you’re not playing a fancy game cooling may not be an issue due to headroom.
They like to wait until stuff is “ready” to their standard. Android had 3G, 4G, and 5G first. OLED screens too.
Early folders had a lot of issues, but I know a lot of that has been sorted for years.
One part I find hard to reconcile with all of that is that even just looking at public facing stuff alone it seems to be under VERY active development.
I count 100 commits in just the past 24 hrs here: https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+log and it’s been at that pace for a LONG time.
Which leads me to ask… what is up with it in your opinion because that’s hard to match up with DOA
Also I wasn’t making up the idea that they were in the process of bringing in this “microfuchsia” VM into Android although it’s purpose is unclear.
In addition Apple would be happy if people started upgrading their phones more frequently.
What's strange is that vanilla OS does show a taskbar (tablet mode) if you increase DPI to 600+. Theoretically you can get a taskbar now only if tablet mode taskbar could show up in secondary virtual displays.
https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy/blob/master/doc/virtual...
Why don't we have virtual offices to wander around yet?
If it’s the size of my current phone and folds out to be twice as wide, that sounds kind of nice. Except it would be so thin I worry it would be flimsy and there wouldn’t be as much space for battery (which the open screen would use faster) so wouldn’t I get worse battery life?
Unless you make it twice as thick. Then it’s twice as thick.
And so I’m not sure that bigger screen would justify any of that for me. Now if it was three times as wide that might be significantly nice because now you’re approaching like iPad mini size. But that just makes the thinness/thickness problem worse.
If it’s say half the size of my current phone and then unfolds to be the size of my current phone (game boy SP style) I’m not sure that’s really buying me anything either. My phone is fine, I don’t need a twice as thick half as tall version in my pocket that’s not really gonna help me.
I have heard they’re popular with women which makes a certain amount of sense to me. Because if you’re going to just carry your phone in your bag then the fact that it’s twice as thick doesn’t matter that much but you get the bigger screen.
I’m a phone-in-pocket person.
So I don’t know, it’s just not making a lot of sense to me. But like I said I’ve never used one and it may be one of those things where after a couple of days the light would go on and I would totally get it. I questioned the Apple Watch at first and now I love it. But that’s not always how it goes.
I feel this a lot. I use it daily, mostly as a thin client for remote desktop use but there are little niggles that would make it better. Examples:
- Let me control how the top bar and taskbar are viewed
- Let games capture the mouse in remote desktop (for fps type games)
- Fix the small issues that cause the mouse capture to fail on steam link occasionally
- Fix rendering issues with firefox while in desktop mode
- Let the youtube UI work in a more "desktop" way while in dex mode
These might be mostly app responsibilities, but if they could fix some of this stuff dex would be a dream instead of just being mostly useful.
Are they though? Phones already have a broad range of uses. I've seen people try to make laptops out of them and it just doesn't make sense for a number of reasons:
- As screen size goes up so do battery requirements, so you're already paying for a screen, a chassis, and a physical keyboard. Why not go the whole way and pay for the silicon?
- When your phone is being a PC it's no longer being a phone; you can't do phone calls and camera photos (at least not well) while it's a PC.
I have a Samsung and use Dex occasionally, but the uses are limited. In my case it's to check personal emails, which is not allowed on the corporate network. But outside of cases like this I can't imagine ever preferring Dex to a laptop or a dedicated computer. It's much better at being a phone.
https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/6/9464639/microsoft-windows...
It's not perfect but usable.
The only thing that wouldn't work was a ruby CSS library that had a (if processor='arm') {crash()}.
What a pleasure to have a computer in your pocket.
I remember when everyone thought we were going to throw out our desktops and do all our work on phones and tablets! (Someone who kept insisting on this finally admitted that they couldn't do a spreadsheet on a phone or tablet.)
> Given that all the compute and all the data is on the cloud, there is little point in making ways for users to do clever interconnect things with their local devices.
IMO, it's a pain-in-the-ass to manage multiple devices, so IMO, it's much easier to just plug my phone into a clamshell and have all my apps show up there.
Something like a Steam Deck or RoG Ally could also fit the bill. Gaming handhelds seem to be turning into "phones but if they didn't suck" (i.e. didn't run Android/iOS).
https://9to5google.com/2018/11/09/samsung-linux-on-dex-andro...
It was the Ubuntu 16.04 desktop running in a LXD container. It crashed when the tablet went in out of memory, so I had to be careful with what I was running.
I might have misunderstood but do you mean as an input device attached to your desktop computer? Kdeconnect has made that available for quite some time out of the box. (Although it's been a long time since I used it and when I tested it just now apparently I've somehow managed to break the input processing half of the software on my desktop in the interim.)
Security-wise: True; but Android is a gigantic yet well-oiled ecosystem at this point, from silicon designers to manufacturers to vendors to developers, running on handhelds to TVs to wearables to gaming devices (including AR/VR consoles).
> shame that Chrome OS was subsumed by Android
ChromeOS had a decade but Google is wise focus on just one desktop platform. I don't think it should surprise anybody that a platform with 3bn users & 2mn odd apps won out.
I'm a developer so I have my needs which are unlikely to be "completely fulfilled" by a Phone-as-computer either.
However "as screen size goes up so does battery requirements", my thought was to keep the device docked in a Dex dock with PD and a fan for cooling, and since the resolution on modern phones is so damn crazy, as long as the device screen isn't pumping pixels when connected it should be fine to do 2k.
While it's a PC it's docked so you can't take calls on the phone easily (unless you have a long cable) but you could with a headset. Now I am not talking about the Dex implementation, I'm in the "what can be" discussion for the future.
For "normal people" a good Android desktop would be a lot better than not having a "desktop setup" at all. They don't have to buy a new device but can still get a mouse/keyboard/display combo and so some "productivity tasks".
I tried Dex out on a S10 or something but it wasn't enough for me other than as a cool gimmick, but I definitely see a usecase that could become widespread.
It isn't. I went from Apple's 16 Pro to an Oppo Find N5. Battery size 16 Pro: 3,582mAh. Though in fairness the Oppo is the same size as an iPhone 16 Pro Max, which has 4,685mAh.
Battery size Oppo Find N5: 5600mAh 56% more than my old phone. 20% more than the 16 Pro Max. Silicon carbon batteries.
It's beautiful what can be done if we go with modern technology and not Apple's profit maximising regurgitation of the same same for many many years.
I was asking if there is not an inverse function, which would be a higher karma unflag operation, on the assumption people who flag up are being somewhat incautious and a smaller set of people could say "no, this is worth seeing"
I have no problem with flagging per se, or with my own ability to see flagged content.
But when you kill the non-PC platforms, you're just left with a reduced capability version of windows apps
It's still shipping, successfully, on millions(?) of devices yearly via Nest Hubs and such. Never say never. But all public-facing signs are fairly clear, the big move is ChromeOS into Android, not Android onto Fuchsia - and note how invested Google is in the Nest Hubs (read: not at all, languished for years now)
(I'm also curious if we could get a stats-based thing on, say, 2019 vs. 2024, My out-of-thin-air prior would be 30% more activity in 2019 than now. But I also figured there was 10 commits a day now, not 100.)
(I tried checking out the whole repo, but then all the apps on my macbook informed me en masse there was 0 disk space left :X Doesn't look like there's a GitHub mirror)
(cheers btw, you're my kind of people, one of the more soul-sucking parts of Google was finding out that kind of person is few, and far between) (i.e. curious and into It, not just here to make your boss or partner happy)
I travel a lot and do not like carrying things, so xreal and phone are more than enough for coding while going day long, easily augmented with a small power bank (unlike a laptop), with all of that fitting in my pockets after I drop my luggage at the hotel. Most my colleagues have macbooks and while they have good battery life, it is no comparison: the search for places with power outlets starts when I am not even at 50%. It is not an apples to apples as I do a lot of compute in the cloud, but even with that on the laptops, they still last a lot shorter and you cannot plug in normal power banks.
In a way it's the same strategy that Nintendo used to re-gain a strong position in gaming (including the lucrative Home Console market where they'd fallen to a distant last place) - drafting their dominance in Handheld into Home Console by merging the two.
Since Windows has started this iteration of their move to ARM, I wondered if Microsoft would be the first to do this properly, by building an adaptable/mobile Desktop/UX to Windows 12 (or 13), pumping up the Microsoft Store, and then relaunching the Windows (Surface, I guess) Phone with full fat Windows on it.
In a way it's the same strategy that Nintendo used to re-gain a strong position in gaming (including the lucrative Home Console market where they'd fallen to a distant last place) - drafting their dominance in Handheld into Home Console by merging the two.
No.
We're almost there. The cool kids are already using 12" touchscreen ARM devices that people from 10 or 20 years ago would probably think of as tablets. Some kinds of work benefit greatly from a keyboard, but that doesn't necessarily mean you want oneall the time - I still think the future is either 360-fold laptops with a good tablet mode (indeed that's the present for me, my main machine is a HP Envy) or something like the MS Surface line with their detachable "keyboard cover".
I use Moonlight to remote to my desktop. Moonlight on Windows can capture Windows key(and some other shortcut like alt-tab) and redirect to remote machine.
Moonlight on Android can't do that, the dev this is Android issue and can't do anything about it.
So the development wasn't local, but it was sort-of usable. (And the editing is local in any case.)
Yeah - I don’t think the user base interested in container UX is “large” in relation to the mobile world.
Also, who wants to carry around a display with its own battery, a keyboard with its own batteries, a mouse/trackpad (batteries) and cables for the above? At some point it’s honestly easier to just grab a MacBook Air and walk out the door.
I don't see that at all.
That's because I think over time the processing power of a eg laptop will become a small fraction of its costs (both in terms of buying and in terms of power).
The laptop form factor is pretty good for having a portable keyboard, pointing device and biggish screen together. Outsourcing the compute to a phone still leaves you with the need for keyboard, pointing device and screen. You only save on the processor, which is going to be a smaller and smaller part.
> theres not a great reason for an individual to own processing power in a desktop, laptop, phone, and glasses when most are idle while using the others.
Even in your scenario, most of your devices will be idle most of the time anyway. And they don't use any energy when turned off. So you are only saving the cost to acquire the processor itself.
Desktop computer processors that can hit the computing power of a mobile processor are really, really cheap already today.
I think that's to generative AI, I would expect people to gradually replace manually creating a spreadsheet with 'vibecoding' it.
> IMO, it's a pain-in-the-ass to manage multiple devices, so IMO, it's much easier to just plug my phone into a clamshell and have all my apps show up there.
ChromeOS already works like that, when you log in on different devices, without having to physically lug one device around that you plug into different shells.
> I still think the future is either 360-fold laptops with a good tablet mode (indeed that's the present for me, my main machine is a HP Envy) or something like the MS Surface line with their detachable "keyboard cover".
I think people still want to use different form factors in the future. There's different uses for a phone, a tablet, a laptop and a desktop.
I do agree that laptops might get better tablet modes, but if you want to have a full-sized comfortable-ish keyboard, the laptop is gonna be more unwieldy than a dedicated tablet.
The only thing you save from running your desktop (or even laptop) form factor off your phone is the processor (CPU, GPU, RAM). You still have to pay for everything else. But even today the cost of desktop processing components that can reach phone-like performance is almost a rounding error; just because they have so much more space, cooling and power to play with.
(Destop CPUs can be quite pricey if you buy higher end ones, but they'll outclass phones by comical amounts. Phone performance is really, really cheap in a desktop.)
Approximately no-one was watching 4k feature-length videos on their phones in 2005, or playing ray traced 3d games on their laptops.
Sending plain text messages is pretty much the same as back then, yes. But these days I'm also taking high resolution photos and videos and share those with others via my phone.
> I hope they'll also allow the phone's screen to be used like a trackpad.
Samsung's DeX already does that.
> I'm fully agreed with you on the wasted processing power-- I think we'll eventually head toward a model of having one computing device with a number of thin clients which are locally connected.
Your own 'good enough' logic already suggests otherwise? Processors are still getting cheap and better, so why not just duplicate them? Instead of having a dumb large screen (and keyboard) that you plug your phone into, it's not much extra cost to add some processing power to that screen, and make it a full desktop pc.
If we are getting to 'thin client' world, it'll be because of 'cloud', not because of connecting to our phones. Even today, most of what people do on their desktops can be done in the browser. So we likely see more of that.
And the hardware to get an SoC with phone-like performance in a laptop or desktop form factor is relatively cheap, just because you have so much more space and power and cooling to work with.
(Your laptop-shell definitely needs its own power supply, whether that be a battery or a cable, because the screen alone will take more power than your phone's battery can provide for any sustained period of use.)
The silicon only has to be fancy, because phones are so constraint in terms of space, power and cooling.
Getting phone-like performance in a desktop or laptop form factor and power and cooling budget is a lot simpler and cheaper.
> They don't have to buy a new device but can still get a mouse/keyboard/display combo and so some "productivity tasks".
The point was that they do have to buy a new device. The only thing they don't have to buy is new silicon. But that's trivial compared to everything else.
> The only thing you save from running your desktop (or even laptop) form factor off your phone is the processor (CPU, GPU, RAM). You still have to pay for everything else.
Having used the same device as my tablet/laptop/desktop for a few years (previously a couple of generations of Surface Book, now the Envy, in both cases with a dock set up on my desk), I never want to go back. It just makes using it so much smoother, even compared to having tab sync and what have you between multiple devices. It's not a money thing, it's a convenience thing, which is why I think it'll win out in the end.
I think as hardware continues to get thinner and lighter, the advantage of a tablet-only device compared to a tablet/laptop will disappear, and as touchscreens get cheaper, there'll be little point in laptop-only devices. I definitely still want an easy way to take a keyboard with my device on the train/plane, and I don't know what exact hardware arrangement will win out for that, but I'm confident that the convergence will happen. I think phone convergence will also happen eventually, for the same reason, but how that will actually work in terms of the physical form factor is anyone's guess.
That is why I am rooting for Samsung DeX and what Google is offering: Samsung and Google can make money for their own reasons making a universal personal digital device.
>Idk how something can barely work as a camera/powerbank unless user error is present.
I literally explained this in the comment. the device doesn't connect to my laptop when I plug it in, meaning that I can't transfer photos off it easily
your entire comment smells viciously of "oh my god! how dare he not have had a good experience with android. my poor baby android..."
if I was biased I wouldn't have bought an android in the first place
>Use it as a desktop PC
> Connect your device to a monitor or TV, and it expands into a windowed desktop. Productivity like on a traditional PC.
If they really try to make a convergent Windows phone, I think they could make it if they manage to integrate Android apps into the Windows mobile UI. However, we are talking about Microsoft, so I doubt they'd actually manage to do it.
Yes, that's useful. But eg ChromeOS already gives you most of that, and a bit of software could get you all the way there.
> I think as hardware continues to get thinner and lighter, the advantage of a tablet-only device compared to a tablet/laptop will disappear, and as touchscreens get cheaper, there'll be little point in laptop-only devices.
I agree with the latter, but not the former. There are mechanical limits to shrinking a keyboard, and still preserve comfort.
(And once you have the extra space from a keyboard, you might as well fill it up with more battery. But I'm not so sure about that compared to the argument about physical lower bounds on keyboard size.)
Agreed. For this reason I'm quite excited about glasses like the Xreal One Pro. Having to carry around with me just my phone, a pair of glasses and a lightweight Bluetooth keyboard would be a game changer for me in terms of ergonomics.
I don't understand what you mean here. If you're talking about some kind of easy sync between devices software, people have been trying to make that work for decades, but they not haven't succeeded but haven't even really made any progress.
> There are mechanical limits to shrinking a keyboard, and still preserve comfort.
Maybe, but those limits are plenty big enough for a tablet - particularly with the size of phones these days, a tablet smaller than say 10" is pointless, and the keyboards on 11" laptops are fine. Now making a device that can work as both a phone and a laptop-with-keyboard will probably require some mechanical innovation, yes, but that's the sort of thing that I suspect will be figured out sooner or later, e.g. we're already seeing various types of folding phones going through the development process.
In case glasses are an option, I heard that Xreal glasses can be hooked up to Android phones directly. Such a setup with a proper Android desktop mode (or even better: a Linux VM with all one's dotfiles and everything) would be fantastic IMO.
Do you think it’s possible that thinking evolved slightly beyond the number of devices shipped in the meantime perhaps?
I’d always been on the opinion of even just assuming they got to a point where the whole starnix linux syscall compatibility layer thing (which is what I see a lot of recent commits pointing towards) to a good point and stopped that it would still make sense in so many use cases that it would have been justified.
It would also change the number of devices shipped question from 1 dying product line to billions overnight which certainly might change the conversation and furthermore would put them into a pretty unique commercial position for more high assurance computing given the security model which would have a lot of follow on effects presumably
Also thanks again for taking the time to answer, you’re right I am genuinely very curious about this.
Having all your data always with you stored locally (on your phone) is simpler than syncing and more private than cloud.
One OS with all your software. No need to install same app multiple times on different devices. Don't need to deal with questions like, for how many devices is my license valid for. However, apps would need to come with a reactive UI. No more separate mobile and desktop versions.
Example, you take a photos on your phone, dock it at your desk or laptop shell, and edit them comfortably on a big screen, with an app you bought and installed once. No internet connection is required.
A docking station could be more than just display and input devices. It could contain storage for backing up your data from the phone. Or powerful CPU and GPU for extended compute power (you would still use OS and apps/games on your phone with computations being delegated to more powerful HW).
This could replicate many things cloud offers today (excluding collaboration). No need to deal with an online account for your personal stuff. IMO, it would probably be less mystical than cloud to most users.
I wear glasses with mine, yet I still find it surprisingly crisp for text in ultra-wide mode. I'd say it is a fairly unobtrusive experience. It also helps that the nose pads don't dig into my skin.
That said, if a Quest Pro isn't good enough, I hesitate to recommend it. The FOV is certainly smaller on the One.
This is baffling to read
It's always funny charging my phone off the USB C for my monitor, nudging my mouse and seeing a pointer appear on the screen though.
But, more broadly, the problem is that they can do it for their own apps, but for all the third party ones, it's down to app developers whether they want to put in effort to support keyboard & mouse/trackpad properly. And it's a chicken and egg thing there - relatively few users use it currently, so there's little motivation to add support, which deters more potential users.
Maybe this is the answer? Even though I don't need the screen, the footprint of a smartphone is smaller than almost all SBC supporting the above requirements.
That said, market incentives can and do change pretty fast. Especially with climate change, and current tension in global supply chains, we could see a shift away from hardware caused by taxes or pirce hikes (I'm not saying we will though).
That'd be a game changer for how much companies might invest in changing what computing looks like.
The only things I can think of are you really want to keep all the data on your phone and don't want to use cloud sync solutions (Dropbox etc.), or you really want to save a couple of hundred dollars getting a (probably terrible) laptop without a motherboard. Not very compelling IMO.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6
Weight 239 g (8.43 oz)
Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max
Weight 227 g (8.01 oz)
Yes. It literally protects your precious photos from being stolen if you plug your phone somewhere else, but the only thing you need to pull down the notification bar and tap to allow the file transfer.
Like it notifies you when you plug it in, if you didn't notice it even once - how can it be not a skill issue?
> is it a skill issue that swiping from the left goes back to the previous page and swiping from the right also goes back to the previous page
... in what app? If this is Chrome then ask Google why. Or install Firefox, DuckDuckGo or whatever else.
> is it a skill issue that google translate requires me to have the google search app installed
Yes, Google tries to stick it's d** everywhere. Just like Apple, though you don't talk shit about Greatest Jobs' Company, because you like it.
BTW, I have an official Google Translate app and I don't have the Search bullshit on the home screen. I literally have nothing except DDG and Camera shortcuts. Android 12, Moto G8. Because you know, you can disable apps.
Women in tech loved the concept: instead of carrying a laptop they could use the medium-size tablet we provided and have a wireless mouse and keyboard both at the office and at home. We also provided a monitor for both home and the office.
The project didn't lauch commercially because in our tests the microusb to micro-hdmi cables caused a lot of issues and management decided against it.
The hardware can do it, it's just that the system settings won't show you the 4K resolution option for some reason. But you can do some hacks to make it appear and then it works just fine.
You need to install a nondescript app called 'Samsung Good Lock' from the Samsung store (not available in Play store), and use that to side-load an app called 'Multistar', which is an app to tweak display settings. From that side-loaded app you need to tap the 'I Samsung DeX' which does various setting changes to "Make Dex even more friendly", it doesn't specify what it does exactly, but it'll make the 4K resolution option appear in the system settings.
This all feels real sketchy and I don't understand why Samsung doesn't just enable 4K resolution officially, because the hardware is clearly capable of it.
With every OneUI update there are rumors that it'll natively support 4K, but so far that hasn't happened AFAIK. Admittedly I haven't used Dex in a while for myself, but judging from recent Reddit posts this hack is still needed.
And I don't know, the container UX people didn't exist for ChromeOS before ChromeOS made it easy to run Linux apps that way so.
I am pretty sure that modern phones are more than powerful enough! My wife's iPhone 16 Pro Max would be amazingly useful if not limited by iOS (which always feels like it's hiding true capabilities behind an Etch-A-Sketch interface to me). If you could plug the iPhone in and run a macOS desktop (which hasn't really changed for 15+ years), that'd be great. Thanks in advance.
I have a POCO F7 Ultra which is powerful enough to run LLMs via PocketPal and could easily replace my daily laptop or PC for work if it wasn't scuppered by USB2 on the USB-C port. If I could easily run ollama on the phone via a web interface I would because it's faster than my main PC for LLMs I think!
On Android you can go into Developer settings and force enable the ability to use desktop mode but sadly I can't without proper display support on the USB C.
I worked at a place that used one.
Because the actually functionality they provide is the same as Slack, but worse in basically every way, is maybe why.
With the S9 they introduced the developer test version of Linux on DeX but it never came to the S8 or S10 and it was already discontinued with the Android 10 update :(
I know Windows isn’t super popular around here, but the idea of carrying one device that I can just dock to work on always intrigued me.
There’s just no way this is taking off with any significant market share in the business world anytime soon being android only, and Apple will never adopt it because they want you to buy 3 different devices. Such a great concept, and with the performance of mobile chips getting so good, very viable.
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-suppo...
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-library/guide...
Note specially the parts of WIP, missing features, to be yet done, and so on.
If you just lift over what you have in 2D it becomes only more painful. But this is what most people do. Also many platforms, like Microsoft Mesh. Yes, it's cool that you can join a teams meeting in VR. But until they add something that actually takes advantage of being in VR, all it does is add more friction. Roasting marshmallows and other cutesy minigames does not add any value whatsoever.
Also I haven't owned a desktop since 2003, and my last one at work was in 2006, although we may debate laptops with docking station are also desktops.
And I expect even a VR meeting space would see more use that’s worse than a normal video call but is happening because someone in charge is over the moon for it, than it’d see use in the far rarer cases where it’s really better.
Let's start with something simpler: a living room. There's no universal design that would fit just any living room. The layout and the set of furniture that would work for my living room will not work for yours. Size, shape, windows, doors, connection to other spaces - everything matters. If you want a great design for your living room, you literally need to start from your specific living room.
There's a great idea -- why don't we come with a resizable (reflowable?) design that could fit any living room in the world? While this idea might be entertaining for an engineer's mind, it doesn't work in practice, unless you can settle for just a mediocre design.
Also, being intellectually honest, we need to attack the strongest Apple we can imagine, not a weak Apple that's easy for us to attack. And that strongest Apple will never adopt this idea because they aim to design the best computer/phone/tablet that they can, and in order to design that they need to start with the computer/phone/tablet.
The idea of a phone connecting to a display/keyboard/mouse and becoming a computer has the problem that you could either optimize your design for what you have with a phone, or for what you have with a display and peripherals. It will never be as good as the system designed from the ground up to be just a single thing. It's always nice to have options, but there won't be any mass adoption for the mediocre combo. It was dead in the water with Palm Foleo in 2007, it's just as dead in the water 18 years later.
Teams has breakout rooms but they are very rigid. You have to switch to one and define them. You can't 'glance over' and see what the other rooms are doing. It's much more flexible to just walk around in a 3D space, work on a shared whiteboard you are standing around, pull in some powerpoints to discuss, and walk over to another group if you're needed (you could see them wave over). At this point it really becomes a real alternative to flying over for a workshop. Thus saving many tonnes of CO2, and much cost in flights and hotels. VR is not quite as good but it's much better at dynamic workshops than a simple video tool like Teams is. Added bonus if you are discussing potential upcoming products that you already have 3D models of. Just picking up a model and going like "Hey why don't we put the USB port on this side", this is really where this shines.
But the tool has to be really good. Other solutions like Arthur, Viverse and Spatial could do it really well (Spatial has since gone full consumer-oriented though and has lost many capabilities for business, it's now more of a luxury VRChat). Mesh can not, it is extremely limited. It's the old AltSpaceVR but dumbed down. It would have been better if they kept AltSpace as it was without messing so much with it.
The easiest thing in my mind would be to use USB mass storage, with the storage presented to the connected computer being virtualized with a layer reconciling changes with actual storage on the fly (which the current MTP implementation already does anyway), solving the problem that USB mass storage traditionally has arising from two systems mounting the same chunk of disk at once.
That would work everywhere and remove the need for a bizarre protocol borrowed from Windows XP.
I would say most kinds of work.
Even if you're just on teams discussions - a real keyboard is much more productive than messing around on a touchscreen. Same with just reading. Sometimes I read a forum thread on my phone and then when I get back to the real computer I'm surprised how little I read and how much it felt like.
The only thing where I don't see this being the case is creative work like drawing where a tablet is really perfect, much better than a wacom or something.
Sure it's fine to get by for an hour or two but spending 8 hours 5 days a week on one is a really bad idea and will provide a great path to crippling RSI. In fact using any laptop that much is a bad idea, due to the bad posture it provides (with the screen attached to the keyboard). This is why docking stations are still so important.
You need to sync it anyway. Having that phone with you all day also means exposing it to a lot of risk involving theft, drops and other kind of damage. You need that sync for backup purposes.
I agree actually having it on the phone is great though. I use DeX a LOT, it's a great way of working when I don't have my laptop with me but do have a docking station available (e.g. at the office when I forget my laptop or just dropped in unplanned)
by plug and play I obviously wasn't referring to the laptop just offering up my photos unlocked. I was talking about plugging it in, unlocking the device and nothing happening. there is no notification, and nothing in the notification bar. this would never happen on an iPhone. this should have been very obvious to anyone paying even the slightest attention
>... in what app? If this is Chrome then ask Google why. Or install Firefox, DuckDuckGo or whatever else.
in every app. it's a feature of the system, just like you can swipe from the side of the screen in almost every app on iOS. why on earth would I have said it if it was just in one app? again, this should have been very obvious to you
>Just like Apple, though you don't talk shit about Greatest Jobs' Company, because you like it.
what is with all this Android white-knighting? it's an operating system, not a protected species. I literally chose to buy an Android phone when I could have bought an iPhone, and somehow I'm biased? I could not care less about this pathetic semi-religious Android vs Apple war that you've got going on inside your head. they're not sports teams, they're tools, and unless you've got a very very specific use case, this tool's main feature should be the rapid, pleasant usability of a few simple features. they should not require concerted effort and research to set up. there are major issues with Apple, and there are major issues with Google, but for what I want in a phone, Apple makes a better OS. for what I want in a laptop, Apple makes a terrible OS.
>Android 12, Moto G8
you're 2 versions of Android behind what I have and you expect to speak as an authority on this?
Do people really do this now? Watching a movie on my phone is so suboptimal I'd only consider it if I really have no other option. Holding it up for 2 hours, being stuck with that tiny screen, brrr.
I can imagine doing it on a plane ride when I'm not really interested in the movie and am just doing it to waste some time. But when it's a movie I'm really looking forward to, I'd want to really experience it. A VR headset does help here but a mobile device doesn't.
But wireless the lag is so bad that it's not really usable. Like Wireless DeX. Definitely not good enough for processor-less VR glasses (even the wireless VR streaming from meta does require significant processing power on the glasses end).
There was a second version which was flat so you could use the phone as touchpad. But it was thick, lacked ethernet port so it wasn't really worth it IMO. When you use a dock it's trivial to use a mouse, way better than any touchpad.
The reality is if it isn't ads or ads adjacent, Google will lose interest. And based on their historical revenue I suppose they ought to continue with this model.
Do you have any examples of desktop UI interfaces that are impossible to create in a Dex like experience, that is possible on Linux, Mac, and Windows desktop experiences?
Or is it that mobile apps will never work great/ideally on desktop? And if that's the case, how is that worse than not having them at all?
Maybe there is a scenario I'm not seeing here.
This conclusion looks unsubstantiated to me when you speak of the modern devices that have a sufficient performance for most typical tasks. You probably can't design a gaming computer+phone but nothing prevents you from making a GNU/Linux phone able to work with different desktop environments depending in its current mode. Indeed PureOS and Mobian operating systems already offer that and work well on my smartphone (Librem 5).
Now, I can see problems too: docked and portable modes need very different performance optimizations. But I'm sure that software can handle this, for example, IDEA IntelliJ has power save mode, and OS-es also demonstrated that they are fine on portable and connected systems alike, like MacOS, Windows, Linux.
It's also not a problem that some things are not available in both modes. For example, Switch has games that explicitly need docked mode, for example, Super Mario Party. Yet both the game, and the platform is popular.
I see no reason why a phone couldn't be a mediocre, or better PC.
With ubuntu's try a decade ago, https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge#/ it was obvious there is a market for this. But the ecosystem chain beats it all. Everyone will wait for their favorite OS to catchup.
RT / 8 went very hard towards touch interfaces. Then 8.1 made a lot of course corrections to re-establish what's good about mouse + keyboard on Windows.
But... RT was abandoned alongside Windows Phone 7 / 8 and Windows 10 Mobile, and Windows 10 focused on mouse-keyboard once again without nearly as much thought about touch.
I really think this was one case where persistence would have paid off. A focus on "Windows everywhere" instead of (or alongside) "Microsoft apps that all exclusively push cloud services everywhere" could've put Microsoft in a position of mobile and convertible device dominance.
Editing to add, I was just reminded of the Surface Duo -- Android based. (And the announced but abandoned Surface Neo...) Another odd moment I'd describe as... "oh wait let's go back and try our old strategy but without any of the advantages of Windows app support on mobile!"
Modern pentathlon is a sport where athletes ("pentathletes") compete across five different events. Even the best of them would be mediocre at best at any specific event competing against athletes who have trained for that specific event.
So I don't think the convergence idea is necessarily bad. It's perhaps somewhat niche, and it's not easy to pull off.
I almost never use a phone, so for me the major selling point of my tablet is no Android oddities or second-rate citizen vibes. I don't need to wade through an app store to do simple things. I'm not depending on a hardware vendor where support stops a few years down the road. Plugin a keyboard and mouse, and it's just like any other computer with a really small screen. I already have a desktop computer, so it doesn't replace anything, but the familiarity is still nice.
The touch experience is not as polished as Android. It's fine for my purposes, though. I'm mostly using the tablet as a night-time reader for epubs - dark background, light level at minimum, and then it works surprisingly well for when I wake up and need something to do before I can fall asleep again.
There can be a lot of reasons for that, like the duopoly forces preventing the competition (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21656355) or insufficient PR.
> Even the best of them would be mediocre at best at any specific event competing against athletes who have trained for that specific event.
In computing, if you have a general-purpose device, it usually can do most tasks sufficiently well.
https://www.amazon.com/iClever-Bluetooth-Keyboard-Foldable-S...
Wouldn't recommend for extended typing though.
Aka "malice".
> or insufficient PR
Aka "stupidity".
While I love Hanlon's razor as much as anyone, I love Occam's razor even more. And the simple explanation for that is that people don't like to use a mediocre combo when they could be using several purpose-built devices which excel at a specific job.
I like to go around with my Leatherman, but when I have a real job I get my toolbox out instead.
> it usually can do most tasks sufficiently well
An RV could do many "car tasks" sufficiently well, and it can do many "home tasks" sufficiently well, too. And while it has its place, it can't compete against the car + home combo, which is why most people have cars and homes but not RVs.
It would be more fair to compare a phone that has desktop features, to a phone that doesn't have desktop features.
So let's compare the best Apple phone that refuses to have a dex like experience; to a Samsung that has had a dex experience for about 10 years, or to a Google phone that is now adopting desktop experiences.
If the future is anything like the past, in 5 to 10 years from now we'll see a desktop experience on iPhone and they're going to be snobby about it.
Stupidity isn't necessary here. A small company simply has no resources for a large PR campaign.
Also, nothing prevents a performant iPhone from allowing a full desktop mode except artificial software restrictions resulted from the greediness. Follow the money.
Android already made lots of progress on multi screens and adaptive layouts, and there is now a new developer center with guides for what they call productivity apps.
Backup is a simple one way sync, but like you said, it is needed. It could still be private, if backup to another of your devices is made when your phone connects to your home WiFi.
https://forums.puri.sm/t/nine-months-librem-5-as-my-only-pho...
https://forums.puri.sm/t/a-l5-review-1-week-to-my-ready-to-s...
There was also a Motorola Ready mode which I experienced briefly on a Moto G that I bought but returned because the screen was horrid mush! (Not all Moto G, some had nice screens, but that particular one was a lower resolution, slow LCD screen with a lot of ghosting.)
But if I remember, Ready isn't really a standalone thing. It's more like what Microsoft Phone Link does - e.g. running your phone "desktop" but on another computer. But I think I'm remembering wrong... so maybe newer ones are a bit more like this - https://www.tomsguide.com/news/i-spent-a-few-days-with-motor...
If you want to connect to any screen then you cannot rely on wireless connections.
That doesn't mean there couldn't be some future that is wireless, but are there any standard wireless communication protocols that have reached critical mass / popularity?
For example, my wife, she is primarily on her phone as a computing device. Only recently after buying a Mac Mini and a Cricut is she back to using a standard computer. She might borrow my laptop for online shopping just so she can open 50 windows and 80 tabs to consume all available memory on my Macbook Air, but that's probably because Safari on iOS has sane tab caps.
I also know that games predominantly for PC / Web have become predominantly mobile over the years. There's a reason Roblox plays on your phone and tablet. You might not have the specs for a gaming machine, but your iPhone / iPad / Android definitely do.
The thin client world is one anticipating a world with fewer resources to make these excess chips. It's just a speculation of what things will look like when we can't sustain what is unsustainable.
It’s the only way you don’t end up compromising either half of the experience too much. Trying to converge both into a single UI as Microsoft previously did with Windows and GNOME is now trying to do now is a recipe for failure.
There are real functional/usability reasons for having a separate device (with its own compute/storage) in a laptop form factor, and furthermore if we are honest, laptops are a kind of student/professional fashion accessory (especially Macs), a social-signal that you are a "knowledge-worker". As a result, that form factor is not going away anytime soon.
What Google are doing seems less about the "desktop mode" for Android (though that's a necessary technical step) than it is about having a unified consumer OS experience between Android and ChromeOS, which according to reports, they are planning to merge.
Though I suspect a laptop is still what you want. Your phone will generate too much heat to leave in your pocket. Or maybe some backpack (fanny pack?) wearable?
Here's hoping they hook it up so we can use it.
[0]: https://www.androidpolice.com/android-15-linux-terminal-app/
Do they? What I want is the power of the desktop available when I have access to it (SW & HW), but if the phone is powerful enough (maybe with a small accelerator box for dGPUs to handle gaming/AI), I’m not really seeing the value of multiple devices; it’s just more clutter and stuff to maintain (e.g. SW context, more HW things that can break & require repair, etc). I’m already using remote VSCode to always program on my home desktop computer regardless where I am because it’s easier than juggling clones across machines and forgetting to sync somewhere.
Isn't that "small accelerator box for dGPUs" another device? That seems like adding more complexity, not less.
Based on what you shared, I don't think you are representative of the majority of the consumer computing device market. There are real human factors (functional and social) that have resulted in the current laptop and desktop form-factors, and why many attempts to completely replace either have failed.
> I’m already using remote VSCode to always program on my home desktop computer regardless where I am ...
Are you doing your remote VSCode session on a phone? You must need at least a 13" laptop (or phone dock device with a screen/keyboard/battery) for that. At that point, why not just use a laptop, and avoid the complexity of plugging/syncing with a phone?
For personal use, 2-in-1 (laptop+tablet) conceptually makes a lot of sense. But I think 2-in-1 laptops go the wrong way -- they are full laptops with bad tablet experiences (because of weight, or desktop-first Windows OS). But I want a good tablet in 80% of time. If Android have reasonably good desktop support (e.g., keyboard, mouse, window management), a tablet with a detachable keyboard will be enough to cover the rest 20% of use cases where I want a laptop.
PS: currently using Tuxedo 2-in-1!
but the person i was replying to was acting like android doesn't work. They were trying to do things that their chosen walled-garden(apple/ios) prevents them from doing, then blaming anything but their walled-garden. they were showing clear bias.
multiple people have explained to you that you're the issue and your response is to get angry, throw around insults, and reiterate that you're using it wrong.
you bought into a walled garden, then acting like everything outside your self-imposed garden is wrong.
If Google spins up a project and then abandons it, how could they possibly be harmed by someone else offering a comparable product? Google has already accepted a total loss on the product, there's really nothing for them to lose here.
It lets people who want to tinker do it, while keeping people who probably shouldn't tinker from doing it.
It's not available in the Google Play store because the play store rules are really stupid. A lot of apps aren't available there.
there's a difference between liking a walled garden and preferring a phone that just works pleasantly with all the features you need straight out of the box, and the fact that you're choosing to misunderstand this shows that you're just completely unobjective. and of course you are, you've literally explained your vested interest in this. it's like trying to argue atheism to an evangelical priest
besides, if we were talking about tablets or laptops or anything that you might actually want to do work on, then a walled garden is a huge issue, a massive dealbreaker. but as far as I'm concerned you're kidding yourself if you think your phone needs a wider pool of features than a Nokia from 2007
I will say I probably didn't get a VM running on the PPP.
Goodwill and more people willing to try whatever they release next, rather than the current situation of “Oh, Google is releasing a new thing? Pass. They’ll just stop supporting it and I’ll be left in the cold anyway, so no bother even trying”.
Killing so many projects makes fewer people interested in trying whatever they release next, which means fewer users, which means a higher likelihood it’ll be abandoned. It’s a vicious cycle that could be stopped or even reversed if they open-sourced their abandoned stuff.
To be clear, I’m not necessarily advocating Google should do it or that it’s be a clear win with no downsides. Maybe the upside wouldn’t be worth it, but there is an upside.
Next (good) thing they build will probably have greater adoption, due to less fear of "they'll kill this in two years anyway".
I am surprised it never came to fruition. I guess its more profitable for manufacturers to push you to get a range of devices in all form factors (macbook + ipad + iphone).
Or, most people keep essentially no important data on their devices (everything is in clouds) so there is no need to manually sync data between a person's devices, eliminating the main benefit to having fewer devices.
Also, it looks like Good Lock is now also available on the Google Play Store, and there it lists Samsung Electronics as the developer [2].
I guess this does make it less sketchy of an app to use, but it still feel wrong to have to do so many weird steps to get a menu option working.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Lock [1] https://news.samsung.com/global/make-your-galaxy-smartphone-... [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.an...
Yes. This is why any furniture store that thinks that they can just offer three designs which would cover 90% of people is going to inevitably fail, as evidenced by Ikea. It's a ridiculous idea that same three designs could be adapted to living rooms across one country, let alone entire globe.
Oh wait. Half of the word's population uses the Bestå cabinets and Nordviken chairs.
Funnily enough Windows is the closest to get this right with 2-in-1 tablet/laptops. 2 problems with this: 1- Windows, 2- sub-par HW.
Sure. But so is the monitor. But it significantly lowers the cost of the experience since I don't need separate CPU+RAM+Motherboard for a desktop.
> There are real human factors (functional and social) that have resulted in the current laptop and desktop form-factors, and why many attempts to completely replace either have failed.
Sure, or maybe the lackluster SW for such an experience is the reason it's failed. No one cares about a desktop form factor. Laptops have clearly eaten that market except for enthusiasts and you clearly see this cannibolization attempt by all players. I don't think they'll stop just because you've declared they've failed because getting this right & winning is a huge advantage.
> Are you doing your remote VSCode session on a phone? You must need at least a 13" laptop (or phone dock device with a screen/keyboard/battery) for that. At that point, why not just use a laptop, and avoid the complexity of plugging/syncing with a phone?
I think you're just grossly misunderstanding what I'm saying. If I can plug my phone into a monitor + keyboard + mouse & the phone can run VSCode with all my extensions, the point of a laptop drastically disappears. Then when I'm done work I unplug my phone and go home. The point of avoiding a laptop is cost - I have a $3k laptop that's not providing any value over a monitor + keyboard + mouse especially when I already need the keyboard + mouse to do any coding. For that cost I could have two massive really nice displays and STILL be saving money. The coding is an extreme example but you can see how simpler versions of this, which is what Android and Samsung are building, can remove the need for many laptops that kids carry around - just put your laptop shell that's just a monitor + keyboard + mouse into your backpack, pull it out, connect your phone, and start taking notes. Moreover, in a corporate environment you can now have multiple people sharing the resources of 1 machine. In fact, many coding shops even just give you a VM to do all your work on with a thin client for the local UI.
The video comment was about phones. The raytracing was about laptops.
Yes, laptops were capable of watching DVDs in 2005. (But they weren't capable of watching much YouTube, because YouTube was only started later that year. Streaming video was in its infancy.)
> It's just a speculation of what things will look like when we can't sustain what is unsustainable.
Huh? We are sitting on a giant ball of matter, and much of what's available in the crust is silicates. You mostly only need energy to turn rocks into computer chips. We get lots and lots of energy from the sun.
How is any of this unsustainable?
(And a few computer chips is all you save with the proposed approach. You still need to make just as many screens and batteries etc.)
Caching works well for that.
> Having all your data always with you stored locally (on your phone) is simpler than syncing and more private than cloud.
Have a look at how GMail handles this. It has my emails cached locally on my devices so I can read them offline (and can also compose and hit-the-send-key when offfline), but GMail also does intelligent syncing behind the scenes. It just works.
> Example, you take a photos on your phone, dock it at your desk or laptop shell, and edit them comfortably on a big screen, with an app you bought and installed once. No internet connection is required.
My devices are online all the time anyway.
> A docking station could be more than just display and input devices. It could contain storage for backing up your data from the phone.
I'm already backing up to the Cloud automatically. And Google handles all the messy details, even if my house burns down.
> Or powerful CPU and GPU for extended compute power (you would still use OS and apps/games on your phone with computations being delegated to more powerful HW).
How is that different from the ChromeOS scenario, apart from that the syncing in your case doesn't involve the cloud?
> This could replicate many things cloud offers today (excluding collaboration). No need to deal with an online account for your personal stuff. IMO, it would probably be less mystical than cloud to most users.
No, it would be more annoying, because I couldn't just log in anywhere in the world, and get access to my data. And I would have to manually bring devices in contact to sync them.
You can build what you are suggesting. And some people (like you!) will like it. But customers by-and-large don't want it.
Of course, that scenario would only become the norm, if there's mainstream demand for that. By and large, there ain't.
No, I have said entirely different thing.
Try to climb off you horse and maybe you will notice the difference between "apps you are given" and "apps I decided to use that are available on the market".
>but the person i was replying to was acting like android doesn't work
Well, that person was too emotional and given us almost no details. But to be honest the way Android behaves (unless you want to hack most of it) - it can be described as "doesn't work" from iOS user's perspective. And no, not because of "walled garden" or some other bs you imagine. Most of the time android phones (yes, even top models) simply lag (or start lagging over the time). Not to mention that the base line quality of software is simply lower than on iOS.
>they were showing clear bias.
And so are you. You are doing _exactly_ the same when writting things like "walled-garden" and "you want to be told"
Based on some quick testing this consumes about 1% per minute on my S24 Ultra which makes this scenario unrealistic (at least for me)
> No, it would be more annoying, because I couldn't just log in anywhere in the world, and get access to my data. And I would have to manually bring devices in contact to sync them.
You are traveling without your phone? I don't always have an unlimited internet when traveling. If you loose your phone while traveling there's a good chance you won't be able to log in due to 2FA anyway. Devices just have to connect to the same local network to sync. Phone probably connects to your WiFi automatically when you come home. Syncing over internet is also possible.
I'm just saying it could be done. Not that everybody would use it or like it. Although, I imagine getting rid of one dependency (cloud) and having more control would be a plus to some.
Cloud is not magically without issues. People do get locked out their cloud account due to some heuristics flagging it, payment issues, user errors or even political reasons. And it can take a very long time before you get it resolved. Last year there was even a story on HN about Google Cloud accidentally deleting customer's account and deleting all their data.
> But customers by-and-large don't want it.
Do you have any data backing this up?
Phone centered solution could be more cost effective. A casual user would only need a phone, a backup solution (either cloud based or an external drive connected to a network) and a bigger display with input devices (portable or desktop). Possibly one less subscription they have to pay and lower HW costs.
E.g. android/ios has better security than Windows/GNU Linux/MacOS, much more reliable suspend/wake functionality, much better battery management, etc.
Like it's a 50/50 chance my laptop with Win 11 will wake up fully charged or fully discharged in the morning, and whether it will be kind enough to actually be ready for work, or I can go brew a coffee before it's ready..
What non-technical users know is “Google released a project, I invested my time in it, they abandoned it, and I was left hanging. This has happened multiple times so I no longer want to try anything new they release”.
Had the projects been open-sourced, at least some of them would have been picked up by others and continued so non-technical users would know “Google released a project, I invested my time in it, they abandoned it, then someone continued it and I’m still using it to this day. I’m happy to try this new Google thing, because even if they abandon it I won’t be left in the cold”.
Linux Plumbers Conference 2025 | Adding Third-Party Hypervisor to Android Virtualization Framework
https://lpc.events/event/17/contributions/1447/attachments/1... https://youtu.be/hLdUCrlheKg
In that case, you are tied to working in places that have a monitor + keyboard + mouse ready to plug into. Perhaps that isn't a problem for your work (or allows you to put needed boundaries around where you work), but there are many people who need to have an 11+" screen and keyboard in arbitrary places, like conference rooms, libraries, classrooms, job sites, etc.
> The point of avoiding a laptop is cost - I have a $3k laptop that's not providing any value over a monitor + keyboard + mouse especially when I already need the keyboard + mouse to do any coding.
I agree that a $3k laptop is overboard. Using a laptop like that for remote-desktop and web browsing has more to do with social-signaling. But it raises the question, did you buy the $3k laptop or did your employer? If it was your employer, is it your financial problem?
For my part, I do personal local development on an $800 laptop (a Chromebook) that works pretty great. If I were only using it for coding tasks with an external display and input devices like you describe, I bet I could just as well use a $200 laptop, but I do care about display quality in on-to-go use cases, so I spent more for a higher end display.
So I'm in full agreement that one should not throw away money at overpriced laptops, but the laptop form factor itself is still pretty indispensable for doing work in arbitrary places. Somehow, I don't see VR/AR goggles that Apple and Samsung are pushing replacing them any time soon.
In another words, I think that the functionality itself is very useful. It's just that it's currently being served somewhat adequately by cloud based solutions. For this reason, such a phone-pc product could not offer much in terms of functionality, and so, it might not be popular at all.
You don't need to imagine a total economic collapse. Take any resource that goes into a chip, and contrive any reason we'll have to consume significantly less of that resource. How do you solve that?
Well, we have highly-redundant compute-per-person. I personally have nine pretty capable computer chips to my person, just in the building I'm in. That's a lot, and that represents an excess in resource consumption. A phone-as-motherboard laptop solves one of those chips. If we make the same games we're making today but we go back a decade or two in graphics, then we can have fewer consoles and gaming PCs, too.
I'm not saying "one chip for many devices" is a panacea. There are other things we might do. Maybe laptops and phones can be made to have display input, for example.
We are sitting on a giant ball of matter. None of our resource use is actually using up material, we are just transforming matter.
We might be running out of resources that are cheap and easy to transform (eg cheap oil), but all of these are problems we can fix with enough energy. And eg solar power is going to provide more and more cheap energy. Fusion is also going to come to the rescue in a few decades (and we already had nuclear fission for ages.)
The economy is pretty resilient. Not even a global pandemic left all that much of a mark three years later.
> Take any resource that goes into a chip, and contrive any reason we'll have to consume significantly less of that resource. How do you solve that?
With substitution, economising and ingenuity. Eg early transistors were made of gallium, but we use silicon these days. That's a substitution.
> Well, we have highly-redundant compute-per-person. I personally have nine pretty capable computer chips to my person, just in the building I'm in. That's a lot, and that represents an excess in resource consumption.
Less than you'd think. These days, the main expense is for the power to run your chips, less so than the energy to make the chips. And having redundant chips around that aren't turned on doesn't cost any of the former.
> If we make the same games we're making today but we go back a decade or two in graphics, then we can have fewer consoles and gaming PCs, too.
Btw, that's one of the answers about what people would do in case of resource shortage for making chips.
> I'm not saying "one chip for many devices" is a panacea.
And I'm saying it would only save you a few chips, but wouldn't save you on batteries nor screens etc.
(And even a 'dumb' screen needs quite a few chips these days.) Hey, even Apple's chargers have more powerful chips in them these days than their first stand alone computers a few decades ago had.
---
Btw, you can economise on powerful chips even more, if you do most of the heavy computing in the cloud: even your combined phone/laptop/desktop chip would still be idle most of the time. The cloud can eg use one million chips for three million people. That's even better than one chip for one person (which you touted as better than nine computers for one person.)
Well, it depends on personal preferences.
I usually go for at least 15" in my laptops, but I can believe that other people would be fine with 11" for what they are doing.
The laptop / tablet hybrid is a valid form factor, and these systems are reasonably successful in the market.
Of course, that doesn't mean that they are the right device for everyone.
Yes, cache invalidation isn't trivial. But it's a software problem that you can solve (for your particular application, or with a library for many similar applications) with enormous economies of scale.
> I'm just saying it could be done. Not that everybody would use it or like it. Although, I imagine getting rid of one dependency (cloud) and having more control would be a plus to some.
Ok, no objection there. Yes, some people would like this.
My point is that cloud first, and local caching that lets you work offline (like what you get with GMail and Google Docs) works well enough for most people, that there's probably not enough market share left over for your offline-first dream to get the economics of scale.
Though it's probably still more than possible in the same way that running your desktop on Linux was feasible from the 1990s onwards: at times a bit clunky, but if you are willing to put up with it, totally doable. Been there, done that.
> Phone centered solution could be more cost effective. A casual user would only need a phone, a backup solution (either cloud based or an external drive connected to a network) and a bigger display with input devices (portable or desktop). Possibly one less subscription they have to pay and lower HW costs.
If you need an external display anyway (and a battery, if you want a laptop form factor), adding a bit of compute power to turn it into essentially a ChromeBook is close enough to free. You don't even need that much computing power, because instead of offloading the computation onto your phone (like your scenario), you offload the heavy lifting into the cloud (basically our real world right now for most people).
The HW costs aren't that much lower, because low performance chips are already pretty cheap.
So you start the 'server' on eg your desktop, and that registers with eg GitHub or Microsoft (or perhaps another service, not sure how open the system is), and then you can use any other computer to connect to your system via GitHub or Microsoft (as a proxy, I think). The other computer can either run just a browser, or can run a vscode (which is basically also a browser in the end).
See https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/tunnels
Yes, the nice thing about the tunnels is that the computer you want to develop on doesn't have to be reachable from the internet. It only has to be able to reach the internet. GitHub (or Microsoft) play the man-in-the-middle.
It's really convenient. I often use it to develop from my laptop on my desktop, even when they are on the same local network: because it's basically just as fast, but I don't have to worry about which network I'm on, it just always works (as long as I have Internet access on both machines. But if that ever stops, I'm not really going to develop much anyway.)
> But it's a software problem that you can solve ... with enormous economies of scale.
Can be a problem for software that doesn't have such economies of scale.
Cloud is cheap for very basic usage, but costs can increase noticeably when workload increases.
Regarding UX. Some things work better in the cloud while some tasks are not so well suited for the cloud (e.g. latency sensitive tasks, task that require non trivial amount of data transfer between the user and the could).
I have no idea how many casual users would be affected by one or more of these things, if any. Phone centered user could still use cloud for some things. Maybe there would be enough interest, if polished solution becomes available. It could be you are right, I don't really know.
It seems to me the only difference between a phone with an extra screen, and a laptop with a SIM card, is the relative balance of power been the user and the vendor (Android restricts user capabilities for the benefit of Google).
How do we get back to the place where people expect a computer to have any number of peripherals, and be under the control of the user...?
Having 'target display mode' on laptops and whatnot is one way that would save the chips that go into screens, which is why I mentioned it above. I agree that computing in the cloud can also reduce the number of chips used (although that does rely on chips to keep the internet going, etc.)
A 'climate collapse' is extremely unlikely. Look at studies on the (prospected) economic impacts of climate change. Wikipedia has an article on it, for example.
In any case, the forecasts expect something like perhaps 20% total reduction in GDP over say the next 100 years compared to the scenario without global warning. (But that's on top of our regularly scheduled single-digit percent per year regular economic growth.)
20% is a huge impact! It's bigger than Brexit. But it's also only about as big as the per capita gap between the US and the UK. And the UK is far from a collapsed nation.
And: in case you want to mention that the economy ain't everything. Yes, I totally agree. That's why my argument works in reverse: the economy can only function when the environment hasn't totally collapsed. Thus if leading experts project around a 20%-ish reduction in GDP, that means that the don't project a collapse in the environment.
As a sanity check: financial markets also don't seem to expect a collapse of the global economy anytime soon.
I'm fine with a heavier ones. And looking at the amounts of iPhones sold (including cases, holders and whatever) the weight isn't a factor for the many.
Except there is a notification for the USB mode.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
And it is this way since 2+ for sure.
> in every app. it's a feature of the system, just like you can swipe from the side of the screen in almost every app on iOS. why on earth would I have said it if it was just in one app? again, this should have been very obvious to you
No, it's not obvious for me. None of my Android phones behaved so and I don't think I can remember such behaviour on any other I saw or used.
> I literally chose to buy an Android phone when I could have bought an iPhone, and somehow I'm biased?
Yes, you are. You somehow equate your personal experience with the one unknown model and make to all Android phones ever. And despite people telling you what you are clearly missing something - you stubbornly insist it's not you but the Android.
> you're 2 versions of Android behind what I have and you expect to speak as an authority on this?
And my daily driver is Moto G54, Android 14. Any other pathetic excuses?
