Going minimal mobile this week (Samsung S22 Ultra)

Android / Linux Smartphones
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This week and the week between Christmas and New Years are pretty much downtime for my company. Additionally, there are large extened families for both myself and wife. And this year is going to be “catch up” for all the family we didn’t see due to Covid restrictions etc the last couple of years

This “downtime” so to speak also allows me to work on special case projects with our customers and business partners.

So for the week, the attempt will be to use these and only these items to do all of my computing chores.

S22 Ultra with 512GB storage
Logitech portable bluetooth keyboard trackpad combo
LG UltraFine 4k with USBC at home.

  1. So right out of the gate, I’ve discovered that DEX makes something as simple as copying and pasting a link in Chrome, stupidly complex and non-intuitive, requiring an intermediary step of copying the link to another app like Samsung notes and then to the post here.

Interestingly, the Samsung browser in DEX operates like I’ve come to expect with being able to right click on the link and then paste, but OTOH, Samsung’s browser insists on a mobile view, which screws up the formatting on a large conventional display.

  1. Something else that’s missing and/or I can’t figure out how to enable is the autocorrect when typing. That may not be a big deal for some, but anyone that knows me here. knows how atrocious my typing skills are… TLDR I need all the help I can get :slight_smile:

  2. When I connect the S22 Ultra to the LG display, DEX starts right up and gives me a quasi windows like desktop environment.

a. Unfortunately the display resolution is only at 1080p, though the LG does a nice job of upscaling.

b. OTOH it recognized my wired USB keyboard and mouse, connected to the display, without any configuration required.

c. On the third hand, most of the video content apps like Hulu, refuse to run on the external display. but instead insist on using the built in display. Trying to just use the browser is so far hit and miss with either it not working at all (HBOMax) or displaying in the aspect ratio of the phone, aka a small window on the large display

  1. Other oddities though, including being unable to scroll with the mouse in the create topic window. Regardless of where you click, it still scrolls the main topic window instead. Also DEX/Chrome apparently doesn’t completely implement the light or dark default themes completey with either setting giving a mishmash of light and dark elements, though to be clear, all is still readable, regardless.

  2. Samsung has been clear about this, but they are correct that things like high resolution displays can impact 5G performance if the phone and display are very close together. eg. don’t prop the phone against the bottom of the display and expect a decent signal.

  3. DEX still seems to be a bit rough around the edges, with the aforementioned interface oddities, but also not as stable as I’m used to with Windows, as I’ve already had multiple app crashes including in Chrome. OTOH MS office apps have not, so far anyway, had any crashes and seem to work quite well under DEX.

So to sum up @dstrauss , we still are a long way from one device to rule them all.

OTOH for less computer intensive folks than us, there still is a “wow factor” when I connect my S22 to my relatives HDTV and get a functional desktop like experience.

PS: Using the S-pen as a mouse substitue seems to be pretty much a non starter when using the external display as you can’t “mirror” the phone in most cases with most apps.

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I’m busting out the popcorn and going to enjoy your experience immensely. Since Microsoft first released Windows Phone I have wondered why a phone couldn’t be the brains and storage, and “Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho, I dock wherever I go!”

Is it just thermals preventing us from having a Surface Duo 3 with WOA, Office, and Adobe that would nail this down?

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Yeah, DeX is pretty good, and I managed to get by using just it for a couple of months. But the sense of relief when I was able to boot up a Windows device (any desktop OS probably would have done) was palpable.

For most things, it really did work great. But things like apps with strict security not running on the external display, or even allowing copying of text to an app on the external display (especially frustrating for password managers), made it untenable.

As for Microsoft apps… for some reason I just couldn’t type in Word. And things like the PowerPoint app are missing so many features that I almost think it’s a joke.

There are also zero good desktop publishing apps on Android. I’ve mentioned it here before, but the best I could find was some janky third-party ‘officially’ suggested LibreOffice OpenOffice port. And by port, I mean it seemed to be running in an emulator. It worked, but it was so, so janky.

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Surely this is what you want, no? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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We had a customer that attempted using Libra Office. The “port” and I’m being generous here, seems to be a somewhat broken translation of the mainstream Linux version, tweaked just enough to run in the Linux based backbone of DEX

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My bad, it was OpenOffice.

This one:

Is that the same one?

The thing is, as janky as it was, and the UI from the 90s, it did what I needed and better than Microsoft’s apps, just didn’t look pretty.

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Libre and Open Office are variants off the same code base.

And FWIW, if you haven’t tried the Office apps for Android in the last year or so, you might have an out of date view of them. They still aren’t quite to the level of the IOS ones, but they have made great strides since Samsung and MS started partnering on things like bundling the Office apps on their phones and tablets

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I only use Excel, and only then as a very basic spreadsheet. It does that well enough, though I find the UI to still be frustrating at times (I have a big display; stop hiding the sheets behind a button!)

I wouldn’t be surprised if Word is fixed and probably is fine now. It was PowerPoint that I was utterly disappointed with. The only good point was that it actually opened and could present PowerPoint files.

I haven’t gone back, as I just don’t need to now.

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If you use GoodLock and Multistar, you can enable 4K resolution in DeX

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Thanks, I’ll check them out.

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I found with my S7 FE, if I turn off the “auto start when HDMI is connected” and instead boot into Dex before connecting to the monitor, it simply mirrors the dex experience on my monitor. This allows for apps like Hulu to play on the monitor. Downside is the resolution doesn’t match the monitor (ie there are black bars on the sides). Not sure if you’re able to boot into Dex directly on the S22 but wanted to mention it.

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IBM had a research project on that which they dubbed “Metacard” (which is all but impossible to find information on), and there was also Oqo (but their website was all Flash, so not much survives about them either).

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Thanks, yes I tried that, unsuccessfully. I’m guessing some differences in either the firmware, OS or likely both

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Don’t use DEX so I may be wrong here, but the Samsung Share option contains a Copy URL selection. Is that not there in DEX?

Also, the menu has a Request desktop option. Also gone in DEX?

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Both are there, but neither work on most boards like ours. For example, you can hit the share icon, then copy link, but then you can’t paste it into the post.

And the request desktop version does give better formatting (though the colors are still off) but still no way to paste a link. My theory is that mouse click is derived from touch support, and there is no way to “touch and hold” like you can with a finger.

Edit: the other barrier is that you can’t just click and drag the link on the address bar, as soon as you click, it clears it instead of letting you select anything

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I just bring my Go2 home and I have it all, including LTE if I want to get the heck out of the house and go sit in a coffee shop for a couple of hours.

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I use Edge on Android and Dex, mostly because that’s where all my stuff is saved and synced, but I find it works well in desktop mode in Dex on the big screen. There are quirks and things that have a different workflow, but for my usage, I’ve been happy with Edge on Dex. There are even a few social media sites that I will use in the browser because the websites still handle certain things (like landscape mode Reddit) better than the apps.

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I’d have a look at this, but for some reason DeX is being really picky and won’t use my hub. Everything else on it works except for the external display (that it detects).

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Thanks. I’ll check it out. Unfortunately part of the test requirements for the customer is the use of Chrome.

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So an update on my adventure now that we are traveling to relatives, with one plus and one minus.

On the plus side, my wife and daughter are big fans of “The Crown” on Netflix. When we got to the motel last night, there was a major storm underway that had knocked out internet and in the motels case, television generally as they are apparently using an IP based cable like provider for content.

But, the LG TVs in the room supported Chromecast so I was able to use it to share the episodes I’d downloaded to the TV.

On the negative side, this morning trying to print a boarding pass for a non smartphone using relative turned out to be an adventure.

DEX apparently is more akin to a chromebook in how it works with printers and the hotel ISP seems to block the cloud print protocols. So I ended up just logging in to one of the ANCIENT PCs in the hotel’s business center to print it.

And as an added bonus, I got to once again feel my age as while the gen z clerk was otherwise fairly tech savvy, he could not seem to wrap his head around why I wanted/needed to print something :upside_down_face:

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