If there was ever a “will they, won’t they?” love story in mobile computing, it’s definitely Google’s on and off again relationship with Android’s desktop mode. There have been countless hints, efforts, and code pertaining to the mythical desktop mode for Android, but so far, Google has never flipped the switch and made it available. It’s 2024, Android 15 development is in full swing, and it seems Google and Android’s desktop mode are dating again.
This past spring, Google added DisplayPort support to the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro in a Feature Drop update, allowing for easy wired connections to external monitors. Then, tinkering in Android 14 QPR3 Beta 2.1, Mishaal Rahman was able to get a new desktop interface up and running, complete with Android apps running in resizeable floating windows. It’s not confirmed that Android 15 will ship with a built-in desktop mode, but the bones are there. It does make me wonder, though: why? What would a desktop interface add to Android?
↫ Taylor Kerns at Android Police
I’m actually fairly convinced Android could, indeed, serve as an excellent desktop operating system, but without any official backing by Google, it’s always been a massive hack to use Android with a mouse and keyboard. It’s not so much the hardware support – it’s all there – but rather the software support, and the clunky way common Android UI tasks feel when performing them with a mouse. I’ve installed Android desktop ‘distributions’ countless times, and the third-party hacks they use, like clunky taskbars and custom menus and so on, make for a horrid user experience.
Samsung DEX seems to be the only somewhat successful attempt at adding a desktop mode to Android, but it can’t be installed on any regular PC or laptop, and requires cumbersome cabling or expensive docks, making it more of a curiosity than a true desktop mode in the sense most of us are thinking of. This feature needs to come from Google itself, and it needs to be something third parties can use in their ROMs and x86 builds so we can truly use Android on a desktop.
I don’t believe that’s going to happen, though. It’s clear Google is more interested in pushing Chrome OS for desktop and laptop use, and it seems more likely that any desktop mode that gets added to Android is going to be similar in nature to DEX – something you can only use by hooking up your phone to a display and configuring wireless input devices. Cool, but not exactly something that will turn Android into a desktop contender.
Does this mean they’re bringing back support for HDMI output? I’m still pissed off that google intentionally broke HDMI support in the first place to upsell chromecast!!
This has been a recursing problem. I’ve seen so many people independently go buy USB-c HDMI dongles because they have a need for it only to learn that they’re not compatible with their android phones. To be clear the adapters themselves DO work and nearly all the ARM hardware used by android supports it too. It’s android itself that was broken by google. If you have an older android devices or one supported by a manufacturers that removes google’s patches (like a oneplus 8T) HDMI still actually works fine.
I don’t think most people will want to use android for desktop computing, but restoring DP/HDMI functionality would at least revert google’s harmful decision to disable it.
>”why? What would a desktop interface add to Android?”
Why? Because Android has supplanted Windows as the world’s most used OS, that’s why. [according to statcounter and similar user-agent-counting websites] There are many countries in the world now, especially in Africa and Asia, where 70%, 80%, even 90% of computing is done on Android. Why would you NOT want to put Android on EVERY possible form factor if more billions of people are using it than any other OS?
There’s a lack of ARM laptops, and the software isn’t designed for non-tactile form factors.
“There’s a lack of ARM laptops, and the software isn’t designed for non-tactile form factors.”
That comment only describes things at the current snapshot in time. It lacks vision.
There will not be a lack of arm laptops for long. I don’t think thats going to be an issue, but I’m not sure how that’s related to the desktop mode the story is about. I would also hope that any desktop mode solves the UI related issues as well. I know how I would design it, but I have no idea what Google is planning. In my perfect world, I would just need to plug my android phone into a laptop, and boom the laptop display, screen, keyboard are now connected to a larger representation of my phone with all the data utilities of and resources of my phone available in a window on my laptop’s screen that behaves like any Virtual Machine desktop would. Even allowing copy/paste between phone and laptop.
> Samsung DEX seems to be the only somewhat successful attempt at adding a desktop mode to Android, but it can’t be installed on any regular PC or laptop, and requires cumbersome cabling or expensive docks (…)
There’s actually another phone manufacturer that made this attempt, quite successfully in terms of the technical implementation, probably much less in terms of popularity, as proven by the fact that barely anybody knows about this capability.
This company is Motorola (Lenovo), that provides “Smart Connect” (formerly called “Ready For”) on its flagship models. That’s pretty surprising for this company, considering that otherwise its has a terrible reputation for what concerns software support (timeliness of the OS updates, refinement of its applications, etc.).
But somehow Smart Connect is pretty nicely designed and it works quite well. The phone can be connected either via USB or local network (wired or wireless) to any Windows PC (on GitHub there is a project to also make it work with scrcpy on Linux), via HDMI or Miracast to an external display, or even via WiFi to another Android device with the companion app installed (e.g. a TV or tablet),. The cabled connection works with any USB-C adapter, meaning that it doesn’t require a proprietary dock.
The full-desktop mode is quite convincing: it has a typical layout with bottom taskbar, apps menu and even notification/settings area. Font size and screen resolution can be scaled, and the phone apps run in windows that can be freely resized or run full-screen, adapting perfectly to the windowed mode, and even switching to tablet layout automatically, if they support it and the window size/proportions allow it.
Besides the full desktop, Smart Connect also provides a seamless mode, which allows to run windowed phone apps on the PC (i.e., without the full Android desktop), and also classic screen-mirroring of the phone. The input is provided either through the PC’s keyboard and mouse, or external peripherals (connected via USB or Bluetooth to the phone), or even by turning the phone screen into a virtual keyboard/trackpad.
Finally, Smart Connect also provides various sharing capabilities between the devices: files, network (wireless hotspot), camera, clipboard, notifications, PC unlock and even a cross-control mode, which creates a virtual workspace with drag’n’drop between the pc desktop and the phone screen, side-by-side. Basically, these are the same features that Apple Continuity offers in in iOS and macOS. And, remaining in the Android world, these are much more useful features in comparison to KDE Connect.
As I wrote, everything works quite convincingly: browsing, productivity, streaming, gaming, and so on. The phone can basically be used as a replacement for a full-fledged PC. The only downsides I found are 1. some latency when the phone is connected wireless, and 2. that the external mouse/trackpad cannot replicate all finger gestures, but none of them are show-stoppers.
Last but not least, Smart Connect looks very clean and user friendly (so far): it does not require an account, it doesn’t seem to “call home” (the connection remains local, not passing through external servers), and it doesn’t have any advertisement or unnecessary clutter.
In the end, I’m quite surprised that Motorola was able to develop independently such a beautiful framework. The impression I got, is that Android’s 12/13 desktop mode is already much more capable and less experimental than how Google has advertised it so far (hiding a castrated version in Android’s Developer settings). I mean, that all these capabilities already seem to exist natively in Android OS, and Motorola has just designed a nice interface to make them easily accessible to the user.
That’s why I’m puzzled, whenever I read about Google’s indecision to finally debut this long-awaited desktop mode on the Pixels. If properly marketed, it could intercept a huge amount of casual PC users, who don’t know yet that they could do with their phones everything they currently do with their PC’s.
Interestingly there’s a topic about ChromsOS switching to the Android Kernel – so I wonder if this would pave the way for a Pixel to turn into a chromebook / chromeos desktop.
I would hazard a guess being a ex-google employee that this is a drive to them cutting costs on corp laptops than for the market 😀
And then there’s this thing:
https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/google-now-has-chromeos-running-on-pixel-phones-with-external-monitors
The google/android universe is getting messier and more confusing with each passing day.
DeX is nice, but one problem with it is actually the ecosystem: the tablet form factor support for most Android applications is less than decent. So, in a desktop 16:9 horizontal screen, these applications looks and behave like crap.
Because why not? Big Tech always limits the user. We could have had a single-machine with Android, Windows, Linux, etc… back in 2012. the android sdk has mips and x86 support, and they’re adding in riscv.
Riscv has NO Windows yet, other than rumors of porting. This is a good thing, no OEM shenanigans as mentioned in the antitrust trial.
Also remember that google killed Project Ara
Ara was a dream come true in theory. I did get a hand on one briefly, maybe they got better, but the magnets were terrible on the one I played with. I could easily see myself lose/destroy the modules in one of my many phone drops.
On Android it is possible to have a _full_ desktop and desktop apps with not too much effort:
termux (https://github.com/termux/termux-app)
termux-x11 (https://github.com/termux/termux-x11)
There seems to be a “not see the forest for the trees” effect when discussing “desktop” mode on Android which usually dead-ends in, “Well, you’re still running Android apps so the utility of general purpose computing is not really there.” This is only true in the most limited sense.
With an additional 10 minutes of extra effort to get termux from F-droid and termux-x11 from github, one can have a very good mostly full desktop experience. See termux-x11 for full help/instructions. Of course, one is still limited to the apps that termux bundles (e.g termux has firefox, but not visual studio code; startxfce4 but not say enlightenment). Regardless, one is still running the full desktop version of the app, not the Android mobile one.
For extra credit and with another 20 or so minutes of extra work, you can get `proot` going in termux and then create a _full_ Linux distro (I use arch btw — sorry, couldn’t resist) on Android. You can then run whatever DE your heart desires with access to the full set of apps your distro offers (usually this means arm/arm64) via termux-x11.
In this way your phone moves extremely close to a real computer/desktop/laptop replacement, depending on your needs and workflow.