Contemporary phones are powerful enough for all your needs so long as they don't run on web UIs and are written in compiled languages.
So then "no".
Unless my phone can be a PC, I don't want to keep paying for extra performance
81–90 of 430 posts
Re: Unless my phone can be a PC, I don't want to keep paying for extra performance
#82I would be happy enough if termux gained access to more sdk functions. I have been running jupiter notebooks and until some previous Android version one could run code against views of the system folders.
That will never happen, unless they accept Android userspace is Java and not GNU/Linux, and adapt accordingly.
Re: Unless my phone can be a PC, I don't want to keep paying for extra performance
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
The sad reality is that market forces don’t want this to happen, since it would cannibalize sales of those other devices. It’s much better for manufacturers to make sure a phone can only do “phone stuff” and a PC can only do “PC stuff”, because then you need to buy both devices.
I don't think this true. Microsoft really, really tried to make UWP a real thing so you could buy a Windows Phone and turn it into a PC by adding it to a docking station, and consumers were totally uninterested. I've never seen or heard of anybody using Samsung Dex in any real capacity apart from a party trick either. I think lack of phone-PC convergence is a bottom-up phenomenon, not a top-down one.
It would have helped if they waited that the market would grew beyond 10%, and didn't keep messing up the whole development experience, that even on Windows desktop made everyone besides Windows team lose interest.
Now they want to sell services, while Apple and Google control all major endpoints.
Re: Unless my phone can be a PC, I don't want to keep paying for extra performance
#84When I was a teen, Symbian smartphones with a physical slide keyboards were all the rage, but too expensive for my budget. I was day dreaming of how cool that'd be to be able to ssh someplace from a phone via grps. I did it years later once (from an early android phone). Now I have an android phone that can do that easily (albeit without a physical keyboard), and yet I never do that day to day. Phones make poor computer and computer make poor phones - it appears easier to send data across then to bother trying to merge them into one.
The real question I have is why software keeps getting progressively slower requiring faster phones. I don't buy the "devs are lazy / management pushes for frequent releases, so devs use poor expensive platforms like electron" or "all manufactures conspire to make phones that age too fast" - both devs and companies have always been like that, I don't see any recent fundamental shift in that. And it is not like current dev experience is somehow fundamentally different and easier then 10y ago - we use similar kinds of abstraction to do similar things (maybe ~20% more productive and simple?). I am genuinely confused.
Re: Unless my phone can be a PC, I don't want to keep paying for extra performance
#85It has been years already for me, I don't buy any Android phone that goes over the 300 euro barrier, and use them until they are no longer fit for purpose, meaning they die, or get stolen. Updates are anyway a joke, so I stop caring for that to the point I only have a passing interest on what Android team shows off at Google I/O. Apple stuff I only use via my employer/customers, but same reasoning applies regarding f…
Happy user of a Galaxy S7 from 2016. It's smaller than what you can get now and has a physical apps/home/back area which I love. I use them till I break or lose them. I never have to care about because I know I can get a second had one for less than 100 euros. Not having valuable stuff with is really liberating. Will use them until I can't no more.
Re: Unless my phone can be a PC, I don't want to keep paying for extra performance
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe because the Atrix is from 13 years ago? They mentioned the Dex, a much more recent product with the same goals.
Which is precisely why I would expect it to be the start of such a discussion. The "use your smartphone as your PC" thing has been attempted again and again for, as you said, 13 years. Generally it's a commercial failure because it turns out that isn't something most people want. That seems hugely important to such a conversation.
Modularity was probably a big deal once upon a time because of hardware costs and the difficulty of synchronization. I'm just not sure it's been that that for a long time. Even the iPad which I somewhat hesitantly bought with a keyboard (and pencil) for a versatile travel device, I'm not totally convinced I couldn't have stuck with mu old MacBook Pro for most purposes.
Re: Unless my phone can be a PC, I don't want to keep paying for extra performance
#87With USB-C, surely we are at the point where we can plug our phones into a hub with a couple of monitors attached and get a proper desktop environment?
Im surprised Apple hasn’t done this yet. I thought about this maybe 5-6 years ago as a product idea.
My thought was that you had a monitor with a wireless charging pad built into the base, drop you phone on the base and it automatically connects to the monitor and other peripherals and starts charging.
You just pick up your phone and leave and it automatically disconnects.
I think other commenters are right that this would cannibalize Apples own products, which is a shame since I think it would be awesome to have a unified computing device.
MacOS already runs on arm64 and the iphone has wireless charging and bluetooth, so I don’t think there is a lot stopping Apple from doing this.
Re: Unless my phone can be a PC, I don't want to keep paying for extra performance
#88Does postmarketOS have something like Samsung Dex? It shouldn't be very resource intensive to run few TUI applications on external monitor.
Re: Unless my phone can be a PC, I don't want to keep paying for extra performance
#89When I was a teen, Symbian smartphones with a physical slide keyboards were all the rage, but too expensive for my budget. I was day dreaming of how cool that'd be to be able to ssh someplace from a phone via grps. I did it years later once (from an early android phone). Now I have an android phone that can do that easily (albeit without a physical keyboard), and yet I never do that day to day. Phones make poor compu…
I can't tell my new Pixel 9 Pro being any faster and I think the effective screen resolution is LESS than my Pixel 6a is, out of the box. I liked the way it fit in my hand better, too. 3 years felt like long enough to "deserve" an upgrade but I kind of regret even bothering to upgrade. The camera is better but that's about it.
Re: Unless my phone can be a PC, I don't want to keep paying for extra performance
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
> who told me their kid didn't even want a laptop for schoolwork which blew my mind a bit but so it goes Some people insist on self sabotaging. It's sad.
Seems pretty judgmental even if I'm not really in a position to weigh in on whether it's a particularly bad idea or not.
If you're in school you will have to write papers. It is objectively a worse experience to do so on a phone than on a full sized keyboard and screen.