Back in 1989, after being fed up with lugging around 10-pound portable computers on flights around the world, I began to fantasize about a day when a personal computer could be truly portable. However, I did not imagine a lighter, slimmer clamshell. Instead, my idea was to create what I called a portable brick or oblong device that would house a CPU and have various I/Os to support a connection to a screen, keyboard, printer etc.
In my wildest travel dreams, I had this “brick” being plugged into the back of an airplane seat in front of me where it also housed a screen and the table tray flipped over and gave me a keyboard. At a hotel, I would connect the brick to a TV and a hotel would have a cheap keyboard in the room for me to use these external devices with my brick. As I pondered this idea, I even imagined a day when this brick could be placed into a laptop shell or, at the very least, be tethered to it and serve as its CPU. The screen and keyboard would just be part of the design.
Of course, back in those days, the technology was not even close to being able to deliver and this fantasy, especially the one for the airplane, faded from sight. In my own work with PC makers, I pushed for lighter and thinner laptops to meet my goals of carrying a smaller and lighter computer with me when I traveled. However, I have always kept the idea of some type of small device that housed a CPU and provided an OS and UI that could be used with a connected screen and keyboard in my mind as I’ve felt this had potential as an alternative way to deliver on the promise of a truly portable computing experience.
Over the last few years, companies like Motorola, Asus, and others have actually brought out prototypes that used a smartphone as the core CPU, OS, and UI that was tethered to a laptop shell. Most recently, a patent emerged from Apple that actually shows an iPhone being placed in a MacBook-looking shell and served as the system’ss CPU as well as its trackpad.
But a new product introduced by Samsung this week is one of the best solutions I have seen to date. It lets the Samsung S8 and S8+ serve as your personal PC CPU and, using its OS, UI, and your data, a person can be connected to a big screen and keyboard to deliver a personal computing experience.
Called the DeX, it is a round device/dock that has multiple I/Os and includes a HDMI port to link it to a TV or monitor, a USB port for printers and various other USB supported devices, and Bluetooth to connect it to Bluetooth keyboards.
In this scenario, you just pop your S8 or S8+ into the DeX cradle and you have a PC experience in front of you ready to go. In this case, the OS is Android and the UI is based on their modified Android UI so it is very intuitive and acts just like the smartphone — but now on a big screen and with a keyboard like a desktop computer. This version of the DEX only works with these new Samsung phones and it does not appear Samsung can make it work with previous versions of their smartphones.
One of the things that has made this idea possible is the fact mobile processors have become extremely powerful in the last few years. They allow us to use our smartphones and tablets as a serious alternative to a PC in many instances. Of course, a PC or even a laptop processor can still deliver a better computing experience since it has more real estate to work with. But smartphone and tablet processors now deliver great performance that allow us to do most tasks we do on a computer, except ones that require “heavy lifting” to handle things like enhanced graphics, images, and more involved productivity.
But the one thing a laptop and desktop PC have a smartphone does not is more real estate to deliver a bigger screen and full keyboard experience.
DeX was created to address this issue. This is especially important if it is to be used for “real” productivity. This is where DeX could fit in, especially for mobile users who already do most of their mobile productivity on a smartphone.
Since I have been studying this idea for many years, I actually like the idea behind DeX and believe it has some interesting potential. In fact, I think it might strike a nerve with many mobile workers whose smartphone is at the center of their business and personal lives today.
I know this concept is a bit radical and, for many, a smartphone may not have enough power to deliver a real desktop-like experience that meets their needs. But, when it comes to extending the role of a smartphone in the lives of mobile business users, DeX gives them an important new way to use their phones for productivity. For many, it could be a game changer in how they can add a desktop-like experience through their smartphones.
I’ll comment even though I can’t read the article: I’ve got 3 issues with DeX:
1- It’s more expensive than a Windows+Atom stick-PC ( Asus and Lenovo have those for $100 on Amazon, I’m sure I could rustle up more). The USB stick has the advantages of size, price even, plus Windows’ apps, plus a phone that remains usable. I’m sure the DeX can make sense, but I’m also sure a Windows stick can make more sense in a lot more situations.
2- The UI is sufficiently different to alienate part of the market. One of the advantages of having an Android desktop is that it works the same as your tablet and phone. Except with DeX it doesn’t: overlapping+resizable Windows, Windows-like Launcher/Homepage… Again, I’m sure it makes sense for some, but around me the use case for Android desktops is mostly seniors who are now struggling with MS Windows and need their PC to work like a tablet, not the other way around. Maybe on the other end of the age scale, youngsters can appreciate DeX more, and a single device is easier to admin and sync…
3- It’s proprietary, so that $150 goes down the drain in 2 yrs when I change phone, unless I stick with Samsung and Samsung sticks with DeX. The Atom stick from 1- has no such built-in obsolescence. From the form factor, DeX won’t work with tablets either.
The concept is interesting. It has been interesting for a while, desktop docks have been available for the Atrix (though it switched to Linux instead of Android when docked), for earlier Samsungs (staying in Android), plus via standard MHL you don’t even need a dock, just plug the phone’s USB into the TV’s HDMI (special cable required)… that never caught on, but might one day thanks to better performance, apps and OS support. I’d think docks need to get cheaper and standard though.
One killer app might be games. An Android flagship is several times faster than the latest Nintendo Switch or Atom PC and docks are cheaper. We’re losing the proprietary games, but getting the Android ones, so I’d call it at least even. nVidia seems happy with its Android consoles (tablet and box), so I’d guess there’s a market.
Samsung often leads the wider Android ecosystem. I’m curious what Google’s will do on the topic, especially with the intertwined ChromeOS question.
“I’ll comment even though I can’t read the article”
You’ve just described yourself very aptly. Well said.
As opposed to your reading his comment before commenting, and contributing to the discussion ?
Who is “pbarthelemy”?
Second keyboard this month.
I hope you do like me and buy xheap ones. Plus I’m utterly untrendy and like the unmechanical, quiet ones ^^
Just keep me laughing, and I’ll get whichever you want.
“I’ll comment even though I can’t read the article”
You don’t need to read it. Tim has pretty much written this same post a few times.
“You don’t need to read it. Tim has pretty much written this same post a few times.”
And I continue to be bemused by every single time he trots out the idea. In what world is this better than Google/Apple’s current model of synching all your data across all your devices via the cloud?
The use case for PCs is shrinking from “a computer that fits on your desk/tray table” to “a computer that can do things you can
never do on a phone or tablet, which fits on your desk/tray table.” I don’t see a lot of room there for a phone that turns into a desktop.
The fantasy of being able to go anywhere with all your data in your pocket and not have to *suffer* the *agony* of carrying a laptop makes very little sense in this era of 1kg laptops with all day batteries. And it makes even *less* sense when you consider that if the place you are going to has a broken KVM, or if the KVM is missing there, you are screwed, so you have to carry a KVM of your own *anyway.* Which means there’s no weight savings over just taking a laptop along, and the benefits of a laptop over a KVM in your bag are obvious – data redundancy and the ability to run apps that are too much for a phone to handle, to name two.
I broadly agree. But, in favor of devices:
– wifi/data might not be ubiquitous. Say if you’re at a client’s, or somewhere that has a TV but no wifi/data (say a holiday cabin)
– for corps (and nerds ^^) there’s a per-device cost. Licenses, but also admin, security…
– a laptop is still bigger than a USB key or a puckdock
– cloud is slow-ish, and synching isn’t proactive (you still can’t flag whole directories for “always make locally available” except in Bittorrent Sync, maybe OwnCloud, which are marginal compared to gDrive/OneDrive/DropBox…)
I do agree that a laptop or tablet or 2-in-1 will generally be the better device, because a dock is a weird halfway between being self-sufficient but not at all. Yet I can imagine
– a kid wanting to continue his day’s games on a large screen in the evening,
– a site supervisor hooking up his/her phone for the day’s wrap-up in his bespoke app,
– a thin-client, “roaming desk” company running Citrix off docked phones instead of buying and managing dedicated dumb terminals…
I suppose I should feign outrage at this slavish copy of MS’s brick that does the same thing with the Lumia. In fact I have them. But I’m not outraged. Choices, for the user, are good.
Plus that would be a strangely random reference point. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e221e99597d421714b9a0c9ecbe96fdd65665cb5b6d76c53a0470b587fb4c402.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a5329a3066b4b2219d451b006c081db86a051a6c9620e2876f4d4b7d307f1d23.jpg
Oh, to be exhaustive, good’ol MHL, works on any MHL-compatible phone, since 2010:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8cd7ba22810ed7452df9be47d1111bf229372fd94694dcd951860c22538e42ff.jpg
This isn’t a race. First doesn’t matter, and you’re delusional if you think multiple companies haven’t been pondering this idea for many, many years. Heck, I was talking about it way before 2010. It’s an obvious idea. It is the execution that matters, how it meets a user’s needs, how it solves jobs-to-be-done. Who did what first is how a child views the world. I was first! Nuh uh, I was first! And so on.
I agree, and I had the Atrix, but not the dock. The s4 as well btw.
And yes, I have a Lumia 950XL with the aforementioned brick.
Clearly unpatentable ideas, because ‘first’ matters to the patent office very much. In fact first is paramount. First also matters in deciphering who’s marketing and fans lie the most. It’s important to know if you’re being lied to, what the alternatives are, just how good the company really is, and generally being informed.
First is often forgotten. Google wasn’t first. Neither was Facebook. Everything is a remix. First. Does. Not. Matter. Serving your customers and delivering value matters. Very similar ideas can end up serving customers in different ways. Patent disputes get solved, all companies and marketing should be questioned, people are generally good at finding what products and services suit their needs. Remember, just because someone makes a choice you don’t agree with doesn’t mean they’re not well-informed. Only fans and trolls care who did what first.
“Only fans and trolls care who did what first.”
So a truth seeker is what exactly, fan or troll?
It’s a rhetorical question btw…
Okay ‘truth seeker’, ask yourself why you care what corporation did what first.
Now that your statement has been discredited? Nah, I’m done.
I’ve told you so many times not to proclaim so confidently with unsupported overgeneralizations.
Ah, you still think first actually matters, and worse yet, you care about ‘first’.
If I may interject in a conversation I only see half of, the title of the article is “a Mobile game changer”. That legitimizes historical analysis: The issue is not so much who was first, but that the product is not new, so the game could/should have been changed already.
That troll can’t and won’t understand that legitimate argument (nor most arguments in general), and chooses to think anyone has as limited and partisan a view as his. Disqus has a very handy Ignore feature… when was the last time one of your exchanges with him was of any interest a) to innocent bystanders b) even to yourself ? And it’s not you I blame ;-p
Having already said in this thread, how much disdain I have for BS, it’s the same answer Bonnie and Clyde gave for robbing banks. “It’s where the money is”. 😉
But I’m sure you’re aware, I’m being “manipulated”. Si amusant! 😉
You and obart are laughably easy to manipulate. Your bias and ego is your weakness, you can’t let anything go. Push a button here, push a button there, watch the troll dance. Bye now.
Aren’t those buttons you profess to press…trolling?
Have a nice day!
Yes, but there’s a defined purpose in mind, it exposes you. You no longer try to hide your bias, so that’s progress. I might leave Disqus soon, it’s been fascinating but I have many other interests in the real world.
Me too! I really suck, but there’s that one drive every 18 that brings me back…
Since quitting smoking I’ve also been accumulating guitars.
Whatever you decide, have fun.
Let me expand on this for you and perhaps you’ll understand. You’re only thinking in the short term. Patents, marketing, product failures, those are all short term consequences. None of that has a long term impact that actually matters. Good ideas should be copied and improved upon, taken in different directions, and copied again. Who did something first doesn’t impact this, not in the least. Somebody has to be first, and the odd time they will also end up a winner, but often not, and as I said ‘first’ is often forgotten. Again, it doesn’t matter. Unless you’re keeping score, which you seem to be.
See…that’s half reasonable.
But preach it to your fellow Apple users as well, by far they are the one’s screaming “slavish copying” over stuff that’s been done before.
And while it may also be smart, and true, that Apple fixes the mistakes of brilliant, but boneheaded implementations from competitors, they actually invent very little, they do design a lot. This creates an aura of them being something more than what they are.
I feel the same about any company, by Apple gives me more causes for correction. “Technology meeting the Liberal Arts”, I think the fashion, movie, and music business knew a lot abot that before Jobs parents were born…
Truth is truth, spin is BS. Too little of the former too much of the latter. Sycophants running amok.
Then again, first matters. Should we ignore Einstein? Newton? Darwin? (Okay, as a gorilla I could see why you would object there).
You’re still keeping score, caring about how much Apple invents and caring whether they have an aura of being something more than they are. You care. Why? I dig Apple gear and I don’t care, because it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is whether the product or service I’m using works well for me. And for me Apple is killing it, mostly.
You have to ask yourself why you care so much if Apple gets too much credit here or not enough credit there. I guarantee that almost nobody cares about this stuff. Should I be angry all the time that the Wright brothers weren’t actually first and try to correct that all over the internet? Should I care deeply that Thomas Edison ripped off a lot of ideas and inventions? I don’t see why I would.
Imagine a world where Microsoft didn’t follow the Mac’s lead, or where Apple didn’t improve upon and implement what they saw at Xerox PARC. That would be terrible.
Agree very much with your last paragraph.
Regarding everything else it’s me being lied to. I care about truth, I care how technical pieces fit. If I detect an untruth, I do one of two things, ignore it, or call it out. Apple has given me too many reasons to ignore them, so I call them out. Same for MS in the 90s.
Now…Look in the mirror. Why do you care if I’m keeping score? You like Apple products, and acknowledge that others may feel differently. So why are you defending them if you’re not keeping score yourself?
I’m not defending Apple, how ridiculous. All I said was first doesn’t matter. And then your head exploded. I don’t care if you keep score, you’re obviously going to continue to do so. Have at it.
You always defend Apple, so don’t be in denial. That’s what’s ridiculous.
My head exploded because history (being first) uncovers lies and half truths.
I understand why you think I defend Apple. You think that about a lot of people, but it’s your frame of reference. If you’re a hammer everyone else is a nail.
This will not be a game changer. It probably won’t even succeed and likely will be gone within a year. The reason is simple: there are already multiple good solutions to many of the problems the DeX can solve: cloud based data syncing, lightweight powerful laptops, computers-on-a-stick and other less expensive ways to connect a phone to a TV/monitor. On top of that, smartphones and tablets have decreased our reliance on desktop based workflows.
The DeX might solve some other problems or be a little better for some people. However, overall the potential market for this is probably very, very small. On top of that, since the new DeX dock only works with the S8, the current installed base of people who can use this is 0. Its potential user base is limited to those who buy an S8 and are willing to spend an extra $150-200 for the dock.
I think the value proposition could change if a few things happen:
1- ubiquity. The value proposition and use constraints change dramatically if the port is by default on most/all monitors and TVs. That’s probably $2 in hardware
2- a cable not a dock, so it can work with any form factor.
It’s kind of a chicken and egg problem. Can’t work until there’s docks everywhere, not worth building in docks until there’s devices to use them. I’d argue it’s a classic case were a standard would create exponential value (MHL… 4.0 by now I think ?), yet unlikely to happen because analysts are telling OEMs to differentiate, not grow the market (wink, wink).
And we have not yet approached the most important and pressing problem of all. Thinness… The Port Killer!
“The reason is simple: there are already multiple good solutions to many of the problems the DeX can solve:”
Exactly this. There are a few overlapping reasons someone needs a laptop/desktop form factor in the smartphone/tablet era:
1. They need a powerful CPU.
2. They need to use part of the universe of PC peripherals.
3. They need a legacy app that isn’t available on mobile OSes.
4. They need a physical keyboard, precision pointer, and/or a large screen.
DeX and similar gadgets Tim is so enamoured of are *only* useful to people who require #4 and *only* #4. And that isn’t a big enough market to justify creating and maintaining a brand new OS, and a new app ecosystem, when we already have perfectly good laptop/desktop OSes and hardware that can satisfy their needs (OK, technically it’s an extension onto Android, same diff, you still need to create and test and maintain a whole subset of OS functionality and a whole new subset of app functionality, all in order to reinvent the wheel for the sake of, what, the 1% of users who feel oppressed by having to carry around a 1kg laptop? Makes no sense).
All previous (semi) kidding aside. This will necessitate a modular ecosystem, or a monopoly. Discounting a monopoly as just plain wrong, that leaves modular.
This, because infrastructure will need standards for compatibility, and governance. Ports must match, commitments must be made for long term support, etc. Then I can have a single device, perhaps a phone, plug in anywhere and establish my computing footprint, that hopefully, I control.