Samsung Dex One Month Challenge!

[Talamakara]

Starting January 1st I am moving my desktop off to the side, turning off my personal laptop and maybe even my work laptop.

I have been using mobile devices for year and tinking with using them as a more primary computer. With phones becoming as powerful as they are, I have decided to force myself to live on my phone. For 1 month I am going to live on nothing but Samsung Dex, that means i will be using Samsung Dex as my only OS. I've already been experimenting a little and can even get full RDP into my work computers without any issues.

I personally think DEX and other similar mobile OS are the way day to day living is going to be in the years to come. Desktops and servers will never go away, but i think using your TV and a wireless keyboard with your phone is going to become the new norm for 90% of the population in the years to come.

Anyone else wanna see if they can make a month with only using their phone? (Android based, sorry apple people, maybe next time   )

[adarw]

why would you want to do this? 

 

this idea is just bizarre to me.

[WhitetailAni]

28 minutes ago, Talamakara said:

Anyone else wanna see if they can make a month with only using their phone? (Android based, sorry apple people, maybe next time   )

No, because it’s a pain in the butt to type on a phone keyboard, many things just flat-out don’t work on phones, school-mandated devices, etc.

29 minutes ago, Talamakara said:

(Android based, sorry apple people, maybe next time   )

Why the arbitrary limitation? My iPhone 7 is as valid a smartphone as your Samsung Galaxy S8 or whatever it is.

[Talamakara]

1 minute ago, adarw said:

why would you want to do this? 

 

this idea is just bizarre to me.

Because I honestly think that going forward, most people are not going to want laptops/chromebooks or even larger tablets. They are going to want once device that does it all. OS's like Android desktop where someone literally has one device (their phone) where they walk into their house drop it on a dock and continue chatting with their friends through a 65" tv is going to be the way it goes.

The people who have desktops and gaming consoles are going to be the small percentage. I know it's a few years away before mobile gaming is as powerful on a phone as it is on a desktop, but even today some of the games on your phone when translated to a large screen are actually really good.

This is also great for people who are out in the country. I have a couple users who can't get good rural internet but they have 5G on their phones. This would be awesome for them as they would need almost no equipment and they could drop the expensive and crappy satellite internet.

When I can personally remote into my gear at work through my phone without any degradation (no i'm not doing high end graphics) it means i can travel with one less device in my backpack. 15 years ago when i was at IBM i literally carried two laptops everywhere, one for work and one personal. Then after I left IBM it was just my laptop that i used for work while traveling. A few years after that i had a really good tablet  that i tethered my phone to. Now all i need is a usb type c plug, and a monitor. even a keyboard and mouse arent a complete necessity even if they were i can buy rollup keyboards and flat mice. So now my backpack has a couple cables, and every where i go has monitors / TVs.

[Talamakara]

3 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

Why the arbitrary limitation? My iPhone 7 is as valid a smartphone as your Samsung Galaxy S8 or whatever it is.

Because right now apple doesn't have a full system in place to act like a complete desktop environment. Yes you can mirror your screen onto a TV but's not really the same as what android does. 

 

Quote

No, because it’s a pain in the butt to type on a phone keyboard, many things just flat-out don’t work on phones, school-mandated devices, etc.

No cause you aren't typing on just a phone, you are using keyboards and mice. Considering there are cloud systems out there that you are just remoting into virtual environment, i doubt it will be long before what I'm trying now is common place.

[BondiBlue]

Samsung DeX is nice and all, but it is by no means a replacement for a traditional desktop operating system environment. I would struggle to use solely Android for a day of work, let alone a month. It's just not practical for a whole lot of different things. I prefer my phone to be a phone and for my desktop/laptop to be a desktop/laptop. I don't have any reason for my phone to try to replace all of my devices. 

13 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

Why the arbitrary limitation? My iPhone 7 is as valid a smartphone as your Samsung Galaxy S8 or whatever it is.

They never said an iPhone wasn't a valid smartphone, but that it wouldn't work for this experiment. iOS doesn't support anything even remotely close to what Samsung does with DeX. DeX uses an external keyboard and mouse (or you can use the phone as a trackpad) combined with an external display to run a desktop Android experience. It works well, I just don't have much use for it. 

[adarw]

8 minutes ago, Talamakara said:

Because I honestly think that going forward, most people are not going to want laptops/chromebooks or even larger tablets. They are going to want once device that does it all.

lol no. people want everything to sync? sure, people want a under powering phone to do everything? no, people want a tiny screen? no. people want laptops.

 

8 minutes ago, Talamakara said:

I know it's a few years away before mobile gaming is as powerful on a phone as it is on a desktop

nope, not possible, semi conductors cant physically get smaller with silicon anymore, humans need to make a new way to make our cpus better. keep in mind, games keep on getting bigger and more hardware intensive.

 

to say that a phone can get as good as a pc is just not true. 

 

13 minutes ago, Talamakara said:

This is also great for people who are out in the country. I have a couple users who can't get good rural internet but they have 5G on their phones. This would be awesome for them as they would need almost no equipment and they could drop the expensive and crappy satellite internet.

that wasnt part of the arugment, sure 5g might be better in rural environments but phones dont give us the capabilities such as typing on a keyboard or looking at a big screen. phones still lack power, sure they might get better but at that point software will get harder to run (thats how it always was). 

 

 

doing the challenge you so speak of is your choice but were just saying its not practical.

[BondiBlue]

8 minutes ago, adarw said:

but phones dont give us the capabilities such as typing on a keyboard or looking at a big screen

Yes they do, which is why OP specifically wants to use Samsung DeX. Connect the phone to an external keyboard, mouse and display and you've got a desktop Android based setup. 

[adarw]

5 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

Yes they do, which is why OP specifically wants to use Samsung DeX. Connect the phone to an external keyboard, mouse and display and you've got a desktop Android based setup. 

may i introduce you to something you said?

 

 

Quote

Samsung DeX is nice and all, but it is by no means a replacement for a traditional desktop operating system environment. I would struggle to use solely Android for a day of work, let alone a month. It's just not practical for a whole lot of different things.

lol

[BondiBlue]

3 minutes ago, adarw said:

may i introduce you to something you said?

My original comment was about my specific needs and what I need to do with a desktop or laptop computer. My reply to you was general information about what DeX does. Two different things there. 

[Talamakara]

2 hours ago, BondiBlue said:

Samsung DeX is nice and all, but it is by no means a replacement for a traditional desktop operating system environment. I would struggle to use solely Android for a day of work, let alone a month. It's just not practical for a whole lot of different things. I prefer my phone to be a phone and for my desktop/laptop to be a desktop/laptop. I don't have any reason for my phone to try to replace all of my devices. 

They never said an iPhone wasn't a valid smartphone, but that it wouldn't work for this experiment. iOS doesn't support anything even remotely close to what Samsung does with DeX. DeX uses an external keyboard and mouse (or you can use the phone as a trackpad) combined with an external display to run a desktop Android experience. It works well, I just don't have much use for it. 

 

You are right, it is not a complete replacement, I'm not going to be playing cyberpunk, Skyrim or creating high resolution animation. however 90% of the laptops out there aren't doing those things either. There will always be a need for desktops with real horsepower, no argument. But that is also the reality of right now. 10 years ago we were happy if the phone could take a nice picture to send to our friends. Today no one cause if a smartphone can answer a call, or send a text message, it's the advanced features people want. They want the high end camera, the ability play music and the ability to do what they want. Problem is most people don't know things like Samsung Dex, Huawei desktop, and the LG Desktop even exist. But that's the crutch, if people knew it existed and they could turn their two thousand dollar smartphone into something they could check emails, browse the web and create / print documents for thirty bucks the docking station costs to hook to their TV, they would be far happier to do that than spend another two thousand dollars on a laptop. I didn't have much use, but as my primary desktop is busy 24/7 i decided on an alternative and this was cheaper than buying a new PC.

 

 

[Talamakara]

9 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

In the foreseeable future, mobile internet will be fast and reliable enough for low latency 1080p60 transmission. And then the world will shift towards decentralized computing (self hosted or by the internet giants). Then mobile devices (phones, laptops) no longer need any more computing power than required to take photos and process the transmission of audio/visual inputs and outputs.

 

Adding I/O devices is not a technological or practical challenge.

 

"decentralized computing" We are already doing that. Cloud technology is allowing this to happen. Well i think internet technology has been allowing this for a while, the term "cloud" is it's latest public face. But no matter what, you will still need an interface like phones or laptops. We already have systems where companies are renting out space to developers on large cloud servers, they don't need the laptops they have, so instead of buying thousands of dollars of hardware, you can use a Dex style desktop. I'm already doing this to remote into my work systems.

We also know that for the foreseeable future smartphones are getting more powerful all the time, so there is nothing wrong with taking advantage of that power, instead of spending more money on more hardware esp if you are in a cloud server that is doing the work for you. Think a smarter thin client. 

 

 

[Talamakara]

4 hours ago, adarw said:

lol no. people want everything to sync? sure, people want a under powering phone to do everything? no, people want a tiny screen? no. people want laptops.

 

nope, not possible, semi conductors cant physically get smaller with silicon anymore, humans need to make a new way to make our cpus better. keep in mind, games keep on getting bigger and more hardware intensive.

 

to say that a phone can get as good as a pc is just not true. 

 

that wasnt part of the arugment, sure 5g might be better in rural environments but phones dont give us the capabilities such as typing on a keyboard or looking at a big screen. phones still lack power, sure they might get better but at that point software will get harder to run (thats how it always was). 

 

 

doing the challenge you so speak of is your choice but were just saying its not practical.

 

"people want a under powering"

I support over 300 people and the vast majority are exactly that. If they aren't building something that is licensed to one machine they are on their ipads. Some of my upper management have not turned on the laptops i built for them in over 2 years. So i completely disagree with you, the average person does not want a laptop. When they go home it's the ipads they use to markup documents not laptops. 

"semi conductors cant physically get smaller with silicon anymore, humans need to make a new way to make our cpus better"

What were you doing on your phone 15 years ago? What were you doing on your phone 5 years ago? The point is, they are getting smarter and more powerful, and in time we will have new technologies, whether thats some new type semi-conductor or quantum based cpu, there will always be new technology coming.

"to say that a phone can get as good as a pc is just not true. "

Do the games you play on your phone today look better than the ones you played on your computer 10 years ago? What happened to the ones on your computer? They got better, phones are going to be no different, they will get better. Yes of course they will never compete with the latest desktop gpu, but they are getting better. I think you are also missing the fact we took men to the moon on a 486 and our phones today are thousands of times more powerful than that.

 

"the capabilities such as typing on a keyboard or looking at a big screen."

this has already been answered for you so 5G is a very valid point in the discussion.


"doing the challenge you so speak of is your choice but were just saying its not practical."

Maybe but i'll have fun doing it and it's not like i'm putting my PC in a closet somewhere, i still have it for emergencies, but as it's running consistently this will be a fun change of pace.
 

 

 

[EricW]

Isn’t it like a glorified chrome book?

[Talamakara]

11 minutes ago, EricW said:

Isn’t it like a glorified chrome book?

Even if it is, it's not really the point.

[steelo]

On 12/9/2021 at 3:57 PM, Talamakara said:

Starting January 1st I am moving my desktop off to the side, turning off my personal laptop and maybe even my work laptop.

I have been using mobile devices for year and tinking with using them as a more primary computer. With phones becoming as powerful as they are, I have decided to force myself to live on my phone. For 1 month I am going to live on nothing but Samsung Dex, that means i will be using Samsung Dex as my only OS. I've already been experimenting a little and can even get full RDP into my work computers without any issues.

I personally think DEX and other similar mobile OS are the way day to day living is going to be in the years to come. Desktops and servers will never go away, but i think using your TV and a wireless keyboard with your phone is going to become the new norm for 90% of the population in the years to come.

Anyone else wanna see if they can make a month with only using their phone? (Android based, sorry apple people, maybe next time   )

I've been using a S20 running DEX 75% of the time, while using my PC, mainly for heavy lifting tasks and gaming. I will say that I am very impressed with the performance, it is great for relatively simple tasks, such as typing up a quick document (I use AndreOpenoffice and Office 365), mobile banking and checking email. I've never noticed any serious lag or delays in opening or switching between applications. I have a physical switch where I'm able to switch the mouse/keyboard control between my S20/DEX and my PC...it's low tech, but it works great for me. There are some things that are frustrating, such as many applications not running natively in full screen mode. Also, the inability to run dual monitors (at least for me) really hinders multitasking. I have a cheap Baseus dock I purchased off of Amazon for like $20 USD and it just works. I'm a minimalist and the thought of having a tiny quasi computer that uses minimal electricity and emits zero fan noise appeals to me. My office is a relatively small room and heats up rather quickly while my PC is running. I recall VR gaming on my PC during the summer and sweating because the temperature in the room would rise about 10 degrees with the fans blowing out hot air.

 

And you can play Cyberpunk on DEX (kind of) if you use GeForce Now. My nephews love playing World of Warships with their uncle and when I visited, I played several games with them from my smartphone (connected to a monitor) and had a great time. 

 

All of this typed on DEX 

[Commodus]

On 12/9/2021 at 8:56 PM, huilun02 said:

In the foreseeable future, mobile internet will be fast and reliable enough for low latency 1080p60 transmission. And then the world will shift towards centralized computing (self hosted or by the internet giants). Then mobile devices (phones, laptops) no longer need any more computing power than required to take photos and process the transmission of audio/visual inputs and outputs.

 

Adding I/O devices is not a technological or practical challenge.

 

While DEX is still decentralized computing, the intent is to offer more versatility and usefulness to existing hardware. I am supportive of this.

 

Tis why I hate artificially locked down consumer systems like consoles and Apple.

This is an oddly contradictory statement.

 

You say you hate locked-down consumer systems, but you want the majority of people to be chained to an internet connection (and also a cloud provider in some cases) for all but the most basic of tasks. That's not really freedom, that's just pledging fealty to another ruler. It'd be like trashing Macs and Windows PCs, but yearning for a total Chrome OS monopoly that kills all meaningful competition and choice.

 

DeX may be limited as-is, but it's a better balance for computing that ultimately puts core computing tasks in your device, not someone else's.

[Commodus]

1 hour ago, huilun02 said:

I never said I wanted that. Its just how things are going to turn out at the current rate of advancement and proliferation of "consumer owns nothing" sales model by corporations.

 

Not that its all bad, because it will also allow people to host their own cloud computing for themselves. Although I see no way around cell service providers becoming the gatekeepers becuase of the amount of mobile data that will be required.

Thanks for clarifying. Still, it's a bit odd to rail against Apple when this potential future would likely give Google and Microsoft further strangleholds over computing.

[Talamakara]

9 hours ago, Commodus said:

Thanks for clarifying. Still, it's a bit odd to rail against Apple when this potential future would likely give Google and Microsoft further strangleholds over computing.

oh the irony. Considering apple does nothing but control their environments, far beyond anything Google or MS does.

[eskamobob1]

Honestly guys, I just don't get the level of vitrol in this thread. I'm personally curious to see how it goes for OP as I can 100% see something similar to dex being the way things go in the future. Litteraly the only reason I even have a laptop over something like dex display is formfactor conveneince as I havent found one that doesnt require my phone to be awkwardly teathered to it hanging around somewhere. I dont do a single thing on my personal laptop I couldnt just do on my phone if I had a bigger screen and a keyboard tbh

[Talamakara]

On 12/16/2021 at 1:39 PM, eskamobob1 said:

Honestly guys, I just don't get the level of vitrol in this thread. I'm personally curious to see how it goes for OP as I can 100% see something similar to dex being the way things go in the future. Litteraly the only reason I even have a laptop over something like dex display is formfactor conveneince as I havent found one that doesnt require my phone to be awkwardly teathered to it hanging around somewhere. I dont do a single thing on my personal laptop I couldnt just do on my phone if I had a bigger screen and a keyboard tbh

"Honestly guys, I just don't get the level of vitrol in this thread."

I'm used to it. When i was 16 (about 26 years ago) i put flexible neon cabling into a first gen Microsoft ergo keyboard.(I wish i still had the pictures) When i told people about this, they laughed and said it would never be a thing, now you have to actually go looking for keyboards without LEDs. Maybe in another 10 years i'll be saying the same thing about Dex when everyone is raving about it then lol.