Samsung DeX
My Experience of Using a Phone as My Everyday Computer
Samsung DeX is the most widely used desktop running on smartphones, yet it still feels like a hidden feature
I’ve been using a phone as my main desktop computer for almost three years. In that time, I have occasionally felt the need to use a ‘real' computer, but that feeling has come surprisingly rarely.
Samsung DeX (meaning: Desktop eXperience) enables a user to connect a Samsung smartphone or tablet to a monitor, TV or laptop. It doesn’t simply give you screen mirroring — where your pokey phone screen is blown up on a monitor, but it’s still your phone screen. Instead, when you start DeX, you get a dedicated graphical desktop that looks familiar to anyone who’s used a personal computer in the last few decades. Under the bonnet, it’s still Android running on your phone or tablet, but when you’re tapping away at a keyboard, words appear on the monitor, and you select them with the mouse, it feels like any decent office desktop. At the end of the day, I put my computer (my phone) in my pocket and walk away. I don’t have to remember to save things to cloud storage; downloads, half-completed forms, email drafts, indeed, everything on my office computer is all in my pocket.
