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0 pointssto_hristo5y ago0 comments

Samsung still does it, but they are a third party thing, support is not native. Some apps just don't work well as a window.

Such a thing implies you have to have a capable monitor and a bluetooth mice/kbd. Adoption will take significant time, but it will come either from current OSes or a newcomer. Remember how Nokia was the definition of reality and Apple came with their smartphone and turned the industry around overnight? Same thing will happen once someone introduces a true universal and responsive device that can seamlessly adapt to all kinds of use cases. It's just a question of when.

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untog5y ago· 2 in thread

> It's just a question of when.

I’m a lot more sceptical. I’m a tech nerd through and through and I can’t really see why I’d want a truly responsive device like that. The things I do on both phone and computer (email, messaging, maps, etc) are on the cloud so it’s easy to switch devices. The stuff that’s more difficult to move (my coding setup) isn’t something I ever use on mobile. I can see the financial argument in favour of it but a laptop style case with monitor, keyboard and trackpad probably wouldn’t ever be that much cheaper than a Chromebook or the like.

sto_hristoOP5y ago

Most of the things one does on a laptop - like media consumption, general browsing, etc. can be done on a smartphone. Why should you be forced to switch devices if all you want is the convenience of a monitor, keyboard, and a windowing environment?

It has nothing to do with the financial side of it, it's all about convergence and finally exposing the full capabilities a such a device. Today's smartphones run full desktop OS under the hood, but they are just artificially crippled behind a platform designed to deliver ads.

Whether you will use your smartphone or laptop/pc for a particular task should be a matter of whether the hardware setup (mobile vs. full desktop) can handle it or not, not if it's functionally possible at all.

untog5y ago

> Why should you be forced to switch devices if all you want is the convenience of a monitor, keyboard, and a windowing environment?

I don’t think you should be forced to but the things you just listed totally change the way you view and interact with a device, so switching to a different device isn’t really all that different an experience than docking the one you’re currently on.

It’s not that it can’t be done, or shouldn’t be done, but to me the benefits feel very minor. If I’m reading an email on my phone and want to answer on my laptop it’s already exceedingly easy to do so. Docking a device instead of using a different one doesn’t really change that equation.

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