What's the best dockable phone in the US market?

[Rusty Proto]

I'm at a point where there isn't much that gets me excited in phones within the US, aside from a few features I know I can't have such as ePaper display, physical QWERTY keyboard, or built in physical gamepad for gaming. However, one feature I'm still seeing signs of is a desktop environment like Samsung Dex that I can just dock my phone and use as a fairly basic PC. Which phones are built around this feature, without necessarily having to pay the Samsung flagship premium? ...or is the Galaxy S series still the only good ones?

[JTPOTATO]

Although don't have much experience with these, Samsung Dex seems to be literally the only "Dockable" solution that is still being worked on.

 

You could probably grab yourself an S20 FE for a pretty good price, and lets be honest. speed improvements in recent generations are not really a concern IMO, unless you are a serious power user.

 

 

[SpookyCitrus]

As far as I am aware Samsung Dex is the closest thing to what you are looking for. Here is a link to the How it works section for the Dex on the Samsung site. It also has a list of compatible devices about mid way down the page. https://developer.samsung.com/samsung-dex/how-it-works.html

[BondiBlue]

DeX is the best option IMO. You can find good deals on the Galaxy S9 these days, and DeX worked fine on that phone from my experience. 

[Kilrah]

Huawei phones have a great desktop environment, probably better than DeX and are cheaper... but you're in the US so not an option unfortunately. 

 

I have this on preorder, with a hardware keyboard and ubuntu touch is supposed to offer the full DE as well but obviously no reviews yet and some time to wait.

https://www.fxtec.com/pro1x

[Rusty Proto]

2 hours ago, JTPOTATO said:

Although don't have much experience with these, Samsung Dex seems to be literally the only "Dockable" solution that is still being worked on.

 

You could probably grab yourself an S20 FE for a pretty good price, and lets be honest. speed improvements in recent generations are not really a concern IMO, unless you are a serious power user.

 

That's exactly what has me a bit cooled on the current cell phone market, as I'm currently an S9 user. I just now need to sort out if it would be cheaper to track down something like a Note 9, one of the newer Samsungs on my service plan, or to get this one reskinned and the USB port repaired, as it's been bouncing around, and these phones are NOT compatible with a Nintendo Switch charger. I would also love a "reverse controller case" if I can find one as well.