Google is building its own DeX: First look at Android's Desktop Mode

I've tried it. I was pretty impressed. I plugged in a USB-C hub with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor and everything worked immediately, even the Windows key on the keyboard.

Android has supported basic peripherals and screen mirroring for a decade at least, and several vendors have tried to bring plug-in phones to the market as desktop alternatives. The fact people still find out about this feature today shows how badly the feature was marketed. Samsung Dex is good enough for 90% of office work these days, if not more. For a short time you could even run fully-fledged Ubuntu through DeX, which would've made the phone a full desktop replacement.

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..

I mean, what I really want is chromebook shaped shell that I slot my phone into for travel with an extended external battery.

I always thought that MS will make something like that. Android phone with "business" app store and docking support for external screen and peripherals. IIRC one of the last windows phones was from HP with dock support. I guess after the windows phone they just gave up.... There was an attempt at making dual screen ms android phone which was a failure (at least from business perspective).

> Android has supported basic peripherals and screen mirroring for a decade at least

I've only ever used Nexus/Pixel phones which haven't supported USB-C external monitors until just 1.5 years ago with the Pixel 8.

LG phones had a pretty good "desktop mode" that activated when you plugged it into a big screen.

Sadly like many of their great features it was not well known....

Well, MS did make that, sort of.

https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/6/9464639/microsoft-windows...

sadly that "windows" key is what i dont like on Android

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.

Yes, I recently tried it with the Pixel 8a. It sort-of works. And fortunately, it doesn't just mirror the screen, but lets you extend it.

> My phone is more than powerful enough to act as a travel laptop, yet its potential is constrained by a small touch screen..

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.

Yeah LG had some really great idea and actually went through with them into actual product (kudos for taking the risk there). But they were horribly bad at selling them, in many cases at the execution of the idea, and also at continued support. This automatically shifted some great ideas into the worthless gimmick category :(

Yes the problem with continuum was just the huge lack of ARM-capable windows software at the time. I think it would have fared a lot better today.