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

(www.androidauthority.com)
442 points logic_node | 3 comments | 13 May 25 14:30 UTC | HN request time: 0.208s | source
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lanthissa ◴[13 May 25 15:03 UTC] No.43973748[source]▶
this done well is a transformational thing, its just no one has been willing to invest yet, but the compute on a phone is now good enough to do most things most users do on desktop.

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.

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reaperducer ◴[13 May 25 15:09 UTC] No.43973797[source]▶
this done well is a transformational thing, its just no one has been willing to invest yet

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.

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1. danans ◴[13 May 25 19:59 UTC] No.43977028[source]▶
> 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.

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-...

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2. jacobgkau ◴[13 May 25 22:30 UTC] No.43978469[source]▶
I had an Atrix 2 that I was excited could work with a laptop-form dock. I never bothered to actually get the dock, though.
3. 72deluxe ◴[14 May 25 10:05 UTC] No.43982749[source]▶
I had one of these Atrix and laptop docks. It was really good, but sadly way ahead of its time. The desktop was a Debian-based Linux desktop and you could install various ARM packages. Unfortunately, the phone just wasn't powerful enough at the time. The touchpad was also not brilliant compared to Macs (probably better than Windows touchpads of the time). I sold it on ebay to a guy who plugged his Raspberry Pi into it, since the Atrix dock used mini HDMI and microUSB connectors. This has obviously been replaced in the modern age with USB-C.

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.