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Android’s desktop interface leaks

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Re: Android’s desktop interface leaks

#181

Post by LoganDark »

joe_mamba wrote: post #84
dfajgljsldkjag wrote: post #69

This looks like it will help a lot of students and families who are on a budget. If you can just plug your phone into a screen you do not need to buy a separate laptop anymore. The browser extensions are the most important part because that is what makes a computer useful. I am glad to see they are thinking about this.

>This looks like it will help a lot of students and families who are on a budget. If you can just plug your phone into a screen you do not need to buy a separate laptop anymore. Except that android phones with display output are mostly flagships with flagship prices. But 50 Euros on the used market got me a retired corporate HP/Dell laptop with 1080p screen, intel 8th gen i5 quad core, 8GB RAM and 256GB NVME on which…

> Except that android phones with display output are mostly flagships with flagship prices.

My Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE was like $80 in 2015 and had a mini HDMI. I expect nowadays most phones can output display over USB-C.

Re: Android’s desktop interface leaks

#182

Post by gman83 »

46493168 wrote: post #171
gman83 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67Jm8IiwURQ That's 14 years old. Kind of crazy this concept hasn't developed more in the meantime.

Why do you think it’s crazy?

I feel like the market for this product is definitely out there, but manufacturers don't want to cannibalize their own laptop margins.

Re: Android’s desktop interface leaks

#183

Post by jeroenhd »

modeless wrote: post #179

They ought to put the status bar at the bottom. All the designers using Macs probably forgot, but Chrome's tab interface was designed for Windows where it could be all the way at the top of the screen. And in general it's more common for desktop apps designed for mouse and keyboard to have frequently accessed UI elements at the top of the window than the bottom. So desktop apps would benefit from being able to use th…

Auto-hide the task bar at the bottom, and you've basically got the Gnome UI. Works just fine. It's the permanent screen reservation of the double task bar that really eats up the usable desk space.

Samsung's task bar (when you enable the DeX integration on a tablet) also supports this and it makes for a fine user experience.

Edit: I've enabled "force desktop mode" on my Pixel 9 Pro and hooked it up to my laptop dock. The UI looks almost exactly the same already. Taskbar at the bottom, notification bar at the top.

It's clearly experimental; my ultrawide screen scales horribly, my keyboard app gets horribly confused, and interacting with the top bar triggers a full-screen tablet overlay that looks a bit weird.

However, Chrome opens multiple windows and browses just fine. There are right-click menus, mouse hover interactions, window resizing features (though some apps require the "force resizable activities" flag). Ethernet Just Works, audio/video just works, and I can operate my phone screen while working in dock mode (so apps that absolutely refuse to work can still be operated through the touch screen).

Re: Android’s desktop interface leaks

#184

Post by jeroenhd »

LoganDark wrote: post #181
joe_mamba wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This looks like it will help a lot of students and families who are on a budget. If you can just plug your phone into a screen you do not need to buy a separate laptop anymore. Except that android phones with display output are mostly flagships with flagship prices. But 50 Euros on the used market got me a retired corporate HP/Dell laptop with 1080p screen, intel 8th gen i5 quad core, 8GB RAM and 256GB NVME on which…

> Except that android phones with display output are mostly flagships with flagship prices. My Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE was like $80 in 2015 and had a mini HDMI. I expect nowadays most phones can output display over USB-C.

Some "flagship" and higher-end-midtier phones cheap out on the USB connection. USB 2 over USB-C with USB-PD for fast charging. No video out, slow data transfers.

Maybe when desktop mode becomes more common there will be an incentive to fix the shitty USB situation.

Cheap phones probably won't really have the power to effectively multi-task so I imagine cheap models would rather disable the feature than leave the user with a bad UI.

Re: Android’s desktop interface leaks

#185

Post by LoganDark »

cromka wrote: post #167
joe_mamba wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it any good? Last time I tried miracast the framerate and video quality was total garbage due to shit compression. Barely worked for streaming youtube videos to the TV but no way I could do it for productivity.

Same here. The only way to make streaming between devices is the way Apple does it, directly, not via Access Point.

Doesn't Apple do it by having the AirPlay receiver be its own access point? LAN in comparison indeed isn't ideal.

Re: Android’s desktop interface leaks

#186

Post by LoganDark »

jeroenhd wrote: post #184
LoganDark wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except that android phones with display output are mostly flagships with flagship prices. My Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE was like $80 in 2015 and had a mini HDMI. I expect nowadays most phones can output display over USB-C.

Some "flagship" and higher-end-midtier phones cheap out on the USB connection. USB 2 over USB-C with USB-PD for fast charging. No video out, slow data transfers. Maybe when desktop mode becomes more common there will be an incentive to fix the shitty USB situation. Cheap phones probably won't really have the power to effectively multi-task so I imagine cheap models would rather disable the feature than leave the user…

> USB 2 over USB-C with USB-PD for fast charging.

Sometimes you're lucky to even have conformant USB-PD. For example, OnePlus for a while had "Warp charging" and the phones wouldn't accept high power over regular USB-C PD.

Re: Android’s desktop interface leaks

#187

Post by nosrepa »

joe_mamba wrote: post #84
dfajgljsldkjag wrote: post #69

This looks like it will help a lot of students and families who are on a budget. If you can just plug your phone into a screen you do not need to buy a separate laptop anymore. The browser extensions are the most important part because that is what makes a computer useful. I am glad to see they are thinking about this.

>This looks like it will help a lot of students and families who are on a budget. If you can just plug your phone into a screen you do not need to buy a separate laptop anymore. Except that android phones with display output are mostly flagships with flagship prices. But 50 Euros on the used market got me a retired corporate HP/Dell laptop with 1080p screen, intel 8th gen i5 quad core, 8GB RAM and 256GB NVME on which…

I'm ignorant on this topic, can you not just plug a USB dock with HDMI out in any android phone and get a display out? I do it all the time on the previous three pixel phones I've had, but I didn't know that this was limited to those?

Re: Android’s desktop interface leaks

#188

Post by OldMatey »

My Huawei P20 Pro did this in 2018. It was fabulous, turned the OS into a mini-computer with a taskbar, desktop, icons, browser etc. It was still the best phone Ive ever owned (and I used to work at Google). It was no wonder Google killed with GSM. It was light years ahead even back then and they really hate competition.

Re: Android’s desktop interface leaks

#189

Post by jeroenhd »

cromka wrote: post #167
joe_mamba wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it any good? Last time I tried miracast the framerate and video quality was total garbage due to shit compression. Barely worked for streaming youtube videos to the TV but no way I could do it for productivity.

Same here. The only way to make streaming between devices is the way Apple does it, directly, not via Access Point.

Mirecast (when done properly) is basically a video stream over a peer-to-peer WiFi Direct connection. H.264+AAC/AC3/PCM audio sent over RTSP/RTP using a standard IPv4 stack. Better codecs are available on newer devices. Two modern WiFi 6 devices can stream gigabits per second that way if configured right, there's no need for the typical low FPS, lag, and desynchronised audio from a protocol standpoint.

For some reason, a lot of implementations (especially on the receiving end) suck at this. The latency seems to be terrible and TVs and displays seem to care more about reassembling old frames than about showing the latest good signal. However, it's not all that different from what Apple is doing.

Miracast over ethernet/via an access point is something different (something I've never really seen used myself).

Re: Android’s desktop interface leaks

#190

Post by esperent »

SirMaster wrote: post #147

So would it make sense to sell a folding plastic shell with screen, keyboard and trackpad in it that you can bring in your bag and pull out to plug your phone into it?

Portable monitor + mouse + keyboard makes more sense to me.

But this can also be cast to a tv, for example. I assume you can use the phone itself as a trackpad. So the only extra hardware you need is a cheap Bluetooth keyboard which you can get for $15.

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