Taking better advantage of a display is nice but imo the really exciting part of desktop mode is the planned integration with Google's Linux Terminal app (i.e. 1st party linux VM support). I have a Samsung DeX device and while you can get a basic dev environment working easily it can be really cumbersome to make it comfortable to use and integrate with your normal tablet workflow. Being able to install full-fat linux apps and run them in a window would be a complete game changer.
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.
lanthissa · 2h ago
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.
lynndotpy · 2h ago
> the compute on a phone is now good enough to do most things most users do on desktop.
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.
mushufasa · 2h ago
in a sense apple is already doing this, since there's shared chip tech in the laptops and phones.
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.
reaperducer · 2h ago
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.
simpaticoder · 2h ago
This is very good news. Especially in light of recent attention given to the possibility of CPU shortages. Lots of programming tasks can be done comfortably on a smartphone. For example, no build front end programming. The description "desktop view" is unfortunate since it calls to mind a browser mode where the site is displayed as it would be on a desktop. And this is something completely different. I do hope this mode does not require an external display because it would be quite useful even with the phone's native display. Especially given their hypixel density and the availability of reading glasses.
bee_rider · 2h ago
I’m not sure I follow on the cpu shortage front. Phone cpus by their nature are attached to a degrading-over-time battery, and are much more power constrained… I have an already 6 year old i7 in my desktop… it can keep up with modern software still in a “I don’t even think about it” manner, which is to say I cranks through anything other than a large numerical simulation (dang Intel, I would have needed to go to an i9 to get AVX-512 back then I think).
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.
pram · 2h ago
Phones also have CPUs, JFYI.
trealira · 2h ago
They could be implying it would help with shortages by making it so that the CPUs already in phones are better utilized, decreasing the demand for new CPUs.
loa_in_ · 2h ago
I don't see what else they could mean, really
the_clarence · 2h ago
I switched from a lifetime of iPhones to an android phone last year, just because of folding phones. They are amazing and IMO the reason why Apple is going to have issues as these get cheaper (unless they release a folding phone too). Now that I have all this screen estate the current UI feels limiting often.
jccalhoun · 2h ago
Rumors are Apple will be inventing the folding phone in a year or two.
davidcollantes · 2h ago
How does this relates to the submission's "Desktop View"? Genuinely trying to find the connection.
6510 · 27m ago
The desktop view is for larger screens, it is somewhat similar to fordable phones.
permo-w · 2h ago
I switched from iPhone to android a month ago and it was so awful that I just went back to using my old phone. I treat the android device as essentially a powerbank with a camera, and even that it's bad at. plug it into my PC to transfer pictures? no response
goosedragons · 2h ago
Is your PC a Mac? Apple doesn't support MTP because they want iPhones to look good or something. Every other OS with a reasonably complete Desktop Environment will allow mounting an Android device as what appears pretty much as a standard USB drive. It's part of why I prefer Android. Using an iPhone on Linux/BSD is just not worth the hassle.
rcMgD2BwE72F · 2h ago
Curious to know what phone you got. A Pixel 9 with GrapheneOS is so much better than any iOS devices from my experience. But since users you have more freedom on Android, this will depend on what you do with it (e.g me, I use Syncthing to locally sync all my files and photos with several devices -- no cloud / subscription needed).
lostmsu · 7m ago
Why would you want to plug in if you can sync them over Wi-Fi using Syncthing?
tsunamifury · 2h ago
Plug it into my pc?
What is this 1995?
nashashmi · 2h ago
I have been waiting for this to go mainstream for nearly six years now.
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.
moolcool · 2h ago
> Google Is Catching Up to Samsung DeX
Does anyone use DeX?
szszrk · 2h ago
Of course. Yet it's still a fraction of userbase.
I chose Motorola for the same reason (they have their own variant of dex which works smooth).
voidUpdate · 2h ago
Multitasking on a phone? I know screens are getting bigger, but it seems like a bit much to me... I can understand this on a tablet, but having two windows that im interacting with at the same time on a phone would feel really cramped, unless its one of those fold phones that are 2 or 3 in 1
bgnn · 2h ago
This is for when you connect it to a large screen
alias_neo · 2h ago
You plug in a USB-C cable with DP-Alt mode (or whatever phones use) and you have a (4K) display of any size, keyboard and mouse (via the USB hub in the monitor), and webcam, speakers, whatever else that's connected to your monitor/hub/docking station.
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?
112233 · 1h ago
A secure device. Pixel with graphene and this thing lets you keep all your classified eggs in one basket, but it is a really hard to pry open basket. At home you can do stuff on it with the same comfort as on PC, but you can always have it in pocket.
SirFatty · 2h ago
"Google’s Secret Weapon Against Samsung DeX"
Samsung has abandoned DeX, attempting to use it (if using Windows 11) the user is instructed to use Phone Link which is not nearly as good, imho.
TiredOfLife · 1h ago
Different things. This about the desktop mode of Dex and not phone to pc mirroring
dboreham · 2h ago
Is this an AI-generated article? Article about novel UI with no screenshots??
tecleandor · 2h ago
It's weird. Android Authority already released a small article some days ago, with video, screenshots, and IIRC showing the way to enable it on the Android 16 preview [0]
The article seems to just repeat the first couple of sentences over and over.
mdhb · 2h ago
@dang why is this flagged? The flagging system on this site is so incredibly bad. It’s always a tiny handful of users trying to control what others can see with zero logical consistency.
pndy · 44m ago
Perhaps that's why: two total submissions from this site and both are added by same green account registered 7 days ago.
jsnell · 1h ago
I'm not surprised, it's a horribly written article, like a paragraph of content stretched out over article-length by AI.
mnmalst · 2h ago
I agree, can anybody just willy nilly flag any post?
mdhb · 1h ago
In practice it bears almost zero resemblance to its stated functionality and instead is really just an extension of personal preferences of a tiny minority of people. It’s embarrassingly unfit for purpose. This happens all the time where stories get flagged for no reason.
dang · 1m ago
It's not a tiny minority of people. The karma threshold for flagging is deliberately kept low so this isn't the case.
jasonlotito · 2h ago
Pretty sure Windows Phone did this over a decade ago. I mean, say what you want about Windows Phones, but yeah, this was a thing.
TowerTall · 2h ago
It was called "Continuum" and was introduced with Windows 10 Mobile. Worked pretty smoothly but it couldn't run win32 application only the new modern UWP apps. Introduced 6 Oct 2015 alongside the Nokia Lumia 950/950 XL. Discontinued when Windows 10 Mobile reached end of support in Dec 2019.
I'm not aware of any Windows Phone implementation like this that existed commercially. Can you point me to it?
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.
They did. The lumia had this feature. It also had a liquid cooling system. But the windows computer was quite limited. This was before they migrated to windows one core.
buzzerbetrayed · 2h ago
As someone who likely never would have bought a windows phone, I sure wish Microsoft would have stuck with it
refulgentis · 2h ago
Welcome to ChromeOS 2.0
bobajeff · 2h ago
Yeah that's what immediately came to mind. This must be part of their effort to merge Chrome OS into Android. On the Chrome OS side they already said are going to be replacing the kennel and other system stuff with Androids guts.
Miraste · 2h ago
That's sad news. ChromeOS is much faster and more efficient than Android. Turning off the Android subsystem in low-end Chromebooks is a huge performance boost, even when no Android apps are open.
odo1242 · 2h ago
To be fair, that’s likely because the Android subsystem is a virtual machine - not running multiple sets of system services / CPU emulation on a computer will make it faster pretty much universally.
Miraste · 58m ago
It's not just the virtualization, ChromeOS has had a lot of work put into performance. The low-end ARM Chromebooks use the same hardware as budget Android devices, and they're noticeably faster. My Android phone uses more RAM doing nothing from a fresh boot than those Chromebooks even have.
nashashmi · 2h ago
Yup, the android vm is too much for a chrome pc unless it’s a high end device.
I can’t imagine android going faster than chrome at a native level either.
mdhb · 2h ago
I suspect there is going to be an amalgamation between ChromeOS, Android and Fuchsia.
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.
nashashmi · 2h ago
What’s the point of running fuschia on android? It should be the other way around: android vm on fuschia.
mdhb · 2h ago
Fuchsia as the core makes much more sense. It replaces Linux for a start and completely changes the security model to something a LOT more defendable among a bunch of other benefits.
source for planned integration: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/392521081?utm_source=...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Does anyone use DeX?
I chose Motorola for the same reason (they have their own variant of dex which works smooth).
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?
Samsung has abandoned DeX, attempting to use it (if using Windows 11) the user is instructed to use Phone Link which is not nearly as good, imho.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Continuum
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.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G
I can’t imagine android going faster than chrome at a native level either.
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.