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Comment by a-dub | Hacker News Reader

i've often wondered if my phone could drive large external displays and become a thin client.

would be pretty cool!

Samsung, Huawei, LG (well, they exited the phone biz) and Motorola all have a desktop mode on many of their Android devices. You plug in a USB-HDMI adapter (I've plugged in a ton of USBC docks to my phone and they just work most of the time), a keyboard and mouse and you have an Android desktop. It's not terrible, and I've used it in a pinch when I don't have my laptop and have work to do.

There's also a way to turn on the desktop mode in developer settings, but I've never tried it in anger.

Microsoft as well with the Duo series. I use it on my Duo 1 regularly

Convergent desktop.

Manufacturers being, frankly, shit, is the only reason we don't already ubiquitously have this.

Always thought Microsoft's Continuum would have been the wave of the future at some point had windows phones survived. Just uses your Windows phone as your Windows desktop.

Samsung Dex is actually pretty flexible in comparison. It's not a terrible desktop environment, and it can "cast" to smart TV's, output via usb > HDMI adapter, or you can plug it into your laptop and bring up the phone desktop environment with the Dex app.

I leave my work laptop at home now, and just take my personal laptop and work phone when I am on vacation now. Dex is good enough to get into 70%+ of the cloud tools I might need when remotely working because stuff is burning down.

Exactly… modern phones are crazy powerful and would work as desktops for 99% of users if they weren’t locked down in software. I have an older $100 iPhone SE2 and it has more cpu power than many new $1k laptops.

Spot checking this, I don't see any manufacturers making a $1k laptop in the same ballpark. Closest seems to be Dell trying to sell last gen processors for the same price as current gen and those are at least 2.5x faster. Excluding them, everything else was 3.5x faster with some far exceeding that.

That being said, it would probably be enough to service many computing needs and one device is a great deal more convenient than multiple.

We have Librem 5 and Pinephone which can work as convergent desktops.

Which is impressive, and even more deeply embarrassing for Microsoft, Google, Dell, Asus, Acer, and everyone else who calls themselves a computer or phone manufactur.

Hard to blame Apple, due to their market entry-point always being late.

With the rise of USB-C "everything" docks this should be more possible then ever too.

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