Kind of like smartphones. They all kind of blew up into this rectangular slab, and…
Nothing. It’s all the same shit. I’m using a OnePlus 6T from 2018, and I think I’ll have it easily for another 3 years. Things eventually just stagnate.
OnePlus 6 line of phones are one of the very few with good Linux support, I mean, GNU/Linux support. If custom ROMs no longer cut it you can get even more years with Linux.
I had an iPhone, was eventually fed up, got an Android aaand I realized I am done with smartphones lol. Gimme a laptop with phone stuff (push notifications w/o killing battery, VoLTE) and my money is yours, but no such product exists.
I was hoping that eventually smartphones would evolve to do everything. Especially when things like Samsung Dex were intorduced, it looked to me like maybe in the future phones could replace desktops, running a full desktop OS when docked and some simplified mobile UI + power saving when in mobile mode.
Yeah whatever happened to that? That was such a good idea and could have been absolutely game changing if it was actually marketed to the people who would benefit the most from it
I used it for a while when I worked two jobs. Is clock out of job 1 and had an agreement with them to be allowed to use the screen and input devices at my desk for job 2. Then I’d plug in my Tab S8 and get to work, instead of having to carry to chunky laptops.
So it still exists! What I noticed is that a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 feels underpowered and that Android, and this is the bigger issue, does not have a single browser that works as a full fledged desktop version. All browser I tested has some shortcomings, especially with drag and drop or context menus or whatever. Like things work but you’re constantly reminded that you’re running a mobile os. Like weird behavior or oversized context menus or whatever.
I wish you could lunch into a Linux vm instead of Dex UI. Or for Samsung to double down on the concept. The Motorola Atrix was so ahead of it’s time. Like your phone transforming into your tablet, into your laptop, into your desktop. How fucking cool is that?
Apple would be in a prime position, they’re entire ecosystem is now ARM based and they have the chips with enough power. But it’s not their style to do something cool to threaten their bottom line. Why sell one phone when you can sell phone, laptop, tablet, desktop separately?
It’s super easy to forget but Ubuntu tried to do it back in the day with Convergence as well, and amusingly this article also compares it to Microsoft’s solution on Windows Phone. It’s a brilliant idea but apparently no corporation with the ecosystem to make it actually happen has the will to risk actually changing the world despite every company talking about wanting an “iPhone moment”
Apple would be in a prime position, they’re entire ecosystem is now ARM based and they have the chips with enough power. But it’s not their style to do something cool to threaten their bottom line. Why sell one phone when you can sell phone, laptop, tablet, desktop separately?
Let’s be real, Apple’s biggest risk would be losing the entire student and young professional market by actually demonstrating that they don’t need a Mac Book Pro to use the same 5 webapps that would work just as well on a decent Chromebook (if such a thing existed)
Or just something like Termux, a terminal emulator for Android. Example screenshot (XFCE desktop over VNC server), I didn’t know what to fit in there:
Full desktop apps, running natively under Android. For better compatibility Termux also has proot-distro (similar to chroot) where you can have… let me copy-paste
Though there is apparently some performance hit. I just prefer Android, but maybe you could run even full LibreOffice under some distro this way.
If it can be done by Termux, then someone like Samsung could definitely make something like that too, but integrated with the system and with more software available in their repos.
What’s missing from the picture but is interesting too is NGINX server (reverse proxy, lazy file sharing, wget mirrored static website serving), kiwix-serve (serving ZIM files including the entire Wikipedia from SD card) and Navidrome (music server).
And brought to any internet-connected computer via Cloudflare QuickTunnel (because it doesn’t need account nor domain name). The mobile data upload speed will finally matter, a lot.
You get the idea, GNU+Linux. And Android already has the Linux kernel part.
Yeah, I remember trying it and while it works the performance hit was too big for my use case. But it’s been a while!
Fortunately I’m in a position where I don’t have to juggle two jobs anymore so I barely use Dex these days.
Which in reverse is also why Samsung isn’t investing a lot into it I suppose - it’s a niche use case. I would guess that generally people with a desktop setup would want something with more performance than a mobile chip.
there is an official android desktop mode, I tried it and it isn’t great ofc but my phone manufacturer (oneplus) has clearly put no work into making it functional
One company put a stupid fucking notch in their screen and everyone bought that phone, so now every company has to put a stupid fucking notch in the screen
I just got my tax refund. If someone can show me a modern phone with a 9:16 aspect ratio and no notch, I will buy it right now
I would love to have a smaller phone. Not thinner, smaller. I don’t care if it’s a bit thick, but I do care if the screen is so big I can’t reach across it with one hand.
Kind of like smartphones. They all kind of blew up into this rectangular slab, and…
Nothing. It’s all the same shit. I’m using a OnePlus 6T from 2018, and I think I’ll have it easily for another 3 years. Things eventually just stagnate.
OnePlus 6 line of phones are one of the very few with good Linux support, I mean, GNU/Linux support. If custom ROMs no longer cut it you can get even more years with Linux. I had an iPhone, was eventually fed up, got an Android aaand I realized I am done with smartphones lol. Gimme a laptop with phone stuff (push notifications w/o killing battery, VoLTE) and my money is yours, but no such product exists.
You can easily keep a phone for 7 years.
I was hoping that eventually smartphones would evolve to do everything. Especially when things like Samsung Dex were intorduced, it looked to me like maybe in the future phones could replace desktops, running a full desktop OS when docked and some simplified mobile UI + power saving when in mobile mode.
But no, I only have a locked-down computer.
Yeah whatever happened to that? That was such a good idea and could have been absolutely game changing if it was actually marketed to the people who would benefit the most from it
I used it for a while when I worked two jobs. Is clock out of job 1 and had an agreement with them to be allowed to use the screen and input devices at my desk for job 2. Then I’d plug in my Tab S8 and get to work, instead of having to carry to chunky laptops.
So it still exists! What I noticed is that a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 feels underpowered and that Android, and this is the bigger issue, does not have a single browser that works as a full fledged desktop version. All browser I tested has some shortcomings, especially with drag and drop or context menus or whatever. Like things work but you’re constantly reminded that you’re running a mobile os. Like weird behavior or oversized context menus or whatever.
I wish you could lunch into a Linux vm instead of Dex UI. Or for Samsung to double down on the concept. The Motorola Atrix was so ahead of it’s time. Like your phone transforming into your tablet, into your laptop, into your desktop. How fucking cool is that?
Apple would be in a prime position, they’re entire ecosystem is now ARM based and they have the chips with enough power. But it’s not their style to do something
coolto threaten their bottom line. Why sell one phone when you can sell phone, laptop, tablet, desktop separately?It’s super easy to forget but Ubuntu tried to do it back in the day with Convergence as well, and amusingly this article also compares it to Microsoft’s solution on Windows Phone. It’s a brilliant idea but apparently no corporation with the ecosystem to make it actually happen has the will to risk actually changing the world despite every company talking about wanting an “iPhone moment”
Let’s be real, Apple’s biggest risk would be losing the entire student and young professional market by actually demonstrating that they don’t need a Mac Book Pro to use the same 5 webapps that would work just as well on a decent Chromebook (if such a thing existed)
Or just something like Termux, a terminal emulator for Android. Example screenshot (XFCE desktop over VNC server), I didn’t know what to fit in there:
Full desktop apps, running natively under Android. For better compatibility Termux also has proot-distro (similar to chroot) where you can have… let me copy-paste
Though there is apparently some performance hit. I just prefer Android, but maybe you could run even full LibreOffice under some distro this way.
If it can be done by Termux, then someone like Samsung could definitely make something like that too, but integrated with the system and with more software available in their repos.
What’s missing from the picture but is interesting too is NGINX server (reverse proxy, lazy file sharing, wget mirrored static website serving), kiwix-serve (serving ZIM files including the entire Wikipedia from SD card) and Navidrome (music server).
And brought to any internet-connected computer via Cloudflare QuickTunnel (because it doesn’t need account nor domain name). The mobile data upload speed will finally matter, a lot.
You get the idea, GNU+Linux. And Android already has the Linux kernel part.
Linux on DeX was a thing but killed by Samsung
Yeah, I remember trying it and while it works the performance hit was too big for my use case. But it’s been a while!
Fortunately I’m in a position where I don’t have to juggle two jobs anymore so I barely use Dex these days.
Which in reverse is also why Samsung isn’t investing a lot into it I suppose - it’s a niche use case. I would guess that generally people with a desktop setup would want something with more performance than a mobile chip.
there is an official android desktop mode, I tried it and it isn’t great ofc but my phone manufacturer (oneplus) has clearly put no work into making it functional
One company put a stupid fucking notch in their screen and everyone bought that phone, so now every company has to put a stupid fucking notch in the screen
I just got my tax refund. If someone can show me a modern phone with a 9:16 aspect ratio and no notch, I will buy it right now
I miss physical keyboards on phones
Maybe make the rectangular slab smaller again?
I would love to have a smaller phone. Not thinner, smaller. I don’t care if it’s a bit thick, but I do care if the screen is so big I can’t reach across it with one hand.
What do you expect next? Folding phones? That would be silly!