6 ms·

I have a couple of thoughts on this but they're more parallel than in complete agreement: 1. I don't think we need a phone and a home computer. There's really

I have a couple of thoughts on this but they're more parallel than in complete agreement: 1. I don't think we need a phone and a home computer. There's really very little reason at this point why they can't be one and the same. A device that plugs into a dock at home and becomes a home computer, and when you undock it it becomes a phone. And I don't mean the ham-handed attempts we've seen, I mean a full-on contextual OS switch. 2. I think the next major evolution in phones should be removing the screen. We need to develop a voice assistant technology which retains context and can "understand" in a more conversational style, but I think that once we've jumped that hurdle there would be plenty of people—for whom phone-staring is currently an act of boredom or filling time—who would willingly get rid of that screen in favor of a voice assistant.

GekkePrutser 4y ago
I think Samsung DeX is not half bad for your point #1. The only real issue with it is that the current generation of their smartphones doesn't come with enough memory. Only 8GB (S22) or even 6 (S21FE). You need more for decent multitasking. But I think generally it's pretty underrated. It had done really annoying issues in the beginning but right now I could imagine doing a working day on it. I don't because I am really a power user, but for someone with normal office use I could see it being viable. I wish this feature would make it to mainstream AOSP because right now it's too obscure to really take off. They made a developer thing with Android 10 but didn't take it the whole way after that.
- pornel 4y ago
  On the hardware side, it's getting close. iPad Pro and MacBooks are basically the same hardware. If only iPadOS wasn't like wearing mittens…
- bzzzt 4y ago
  > The only real issue with it is that the current generation of their smartphones doesn't come with enough memory. Only 8GB (S22) or even 6 (S21FE). You need more for decent multitasking. Since we're fantasising about future computers I hope there won't be more than 8Gb necessary to multitask. I remember running Windows and Office in the 90s on 16Mb. Seems like the 1000-fold increase in memory was mostly negated by wasteful software engineering...
  - vel0city 4y ago
    My personal laptop has 8GB of RAM running Windows. It has plenty of RAM to run multiple chat applications, SDR software, a mail client, several browser tabs, streaming music playback, several SSH sessions, a few RDP sessions, a few text editors open, all at the same time. That's kind of a common set of applications open at any given moment on the thing when its being used. I'd say that's decently multitasking. I don't doubt some things swap (pagefile, windows after all), but whatever its putting in swap is not noticeable. I don't experience stalls.
    - GekkePrutser 4y ago
      Android is not really optimised for desktop usage, this is the problem. It doesn't have swap and it forces apps to reload instead, which is really annoying when doing work in multiple windows. Like I said below, go to an excel sheet to look something up, come back to the browser and it will refresh due to low memory. It's something that can be fixed but it's really inherent to Android's underlying design as a one-app-at-a-time OS.
  - dboreham 4y ago
    Also remember using a VAX with 30 other people with 8 Megabytes of RAM.
- aspyct 4y ago
  I really like Dex, at least the idea of it. I've been trying to work off my phone for a few years now, my first attempt was with the Galaxy S6, some version of container linux, and a raspberry pi with X11 forwarding as screen. It was brilliant, though a little underpowered. My main issue with Dex is the perennity of the system. Is Samsung going to keep pushing this, or will a native android version takeover? Or maybe at some point they'll say "well that didn't work out" and abandon it completely? I want to believe! Every year I get closer to being able to do my work completely off a phone. I also think 8GB of RAM is plenty. Most administrative tasks can be done on that, and for the heavy tasks, you could always leverage a remote server. Think of github codespaces, or modern virtual machines in the cloud. Sure, you need internet, but don't you always, for this kind of workload? Yeah, yeah, I want to believe :)
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    > My main issue with Dex is the perennity of the system. Is Samsung going to keep pushing this, or will a native android version takeover? Or maybe at some point they'll say "well that didn't work out" and abandon it completely? Agreed, this is also a worry of mine. In fact they did exactly this with Linux on DeX. > Every year I get closer to being able to do my work completely off a phone. I also think 8GB of RAM is plenty. Remember that Android devices don't do swap. What I see with DeX is a LOT of tab refreshing when it starts running out of memory. Which is really annoying when you're trying to do actual work (e.g. going to an Excel sheet to look up something, but then going back to the browser to continue filling in a form, but in the mean time this has reset due to a forced page reload).
    - aspyct 4y ago
      Ah yes, linux on Dex was looking sweet! Right now I'm using termux, which is working really really well. I'm amazed! I have this big PHP app wich runs perfectly fine on it, with dependencies and all, I honestly expected trouble, but it just worked. As for the swap: yeah that sounds annoying :(
      - GekkePrutser 4y ago
Aardwolf 4y ago
I do like having both separated. Different devices for different use cases. You also don't use e.g. the same pair of pants for swimming and office work. Mobile OS's give you almost no control over anything, but you're forced without choice to use them and their apps you have zero say over for half the things today (e.g. parking, banking, choosing the color of your LED lamp, ...). It's great to keep that separate from my desktop computing workflow. Unless I can bring my home computer paradigm to the phone. But are those parkings, banks and LED lamp manufacturers going to allow me to run their stuff on my OS of my choosing over which I have full control?
- borbulon 4y ago
  You seem to be missing the part where I said a full-on contextual OS switch. To borrow your metaphor, it would be like putting on a pair of pants which turned into swim trunks at the pool, then turned into work pants at work.
  - Aardwolf 4y ago
    But then what does the phone still do? Perhaps just act as a key for an OS running in the cloud that you can access from anywhere? Or do you mean to use the phone's hardware for the computing and storage? At the very least I wouldn't want important documents stored on something so easy to lose.
    - borbulon 4y ago
      My gut tells me that cloud-based OSes have too much of a user-server lag? I could be wrong. I don't claim to have all the answers for this worked out, TBH - otherwise I'd be starting a company that's working on this problem. I do think it's an avenue to be explored, though. But as far as document storage, Maybe the dock acts as a home server? Either way, it seems like off-device document storage is a problem that's been solved multiple ways already?
eimrine 4y ago
> I think the next major evolution in phones should be removing the screen. > We need to develop a voice assistant technology which retains context and can "understand" in a more conversational style Former is about output device while latter is about input one. What is the connection?
- borbulon 4y ago
  A phone screen is interactive, not output only. The idea of a conversational voice assistant is also interactive.
hulitu 4y ago
> I don't think we need a phone and a home computer. There's really very little reason at this point why they can't be one and the same My phone can only run some stupid games and some web apps. You cannot program on it and you have a very limited choice on what you can run on it.
robofanatic 4y ago
> I think the next major evolution in phones should be removing the screen. We need to develop a voice assistant technology which retains context and can "understand" in a more conversational style, but I think that once we've jumped that hurdle there would be plenty of people—for whom phone-staring is currently an act of boredom or filling time—who would willingly get rid of that screen in favor of a voice assistant. have you heard of Google Assistant? It does exactly what you are saying. They do have a screenless device too. Also there is Amazon Alexa that basically does the same thing.
- eimrine 4y ago
  These things can not do anything except of delivering some adware to be honest. I will change my mind when it become possible to do anything in REPL using this kind of screenless device. And, of course, author tells nothing about online-only devices.
  - robofanatic 4y ago
    well, my point was that the technology exists. Obviously it doesn't replace the traditional computer or a phone but you can do things like making phone calls, setting reminders, timers, alarms, playing songs etc. for some of these tasks you don't need wifi connection on.
    - eimrine 4y ago
      > my point was that the technology exists > for some of these tasks you don't need wifi connection on And all of this abilities are literally baked in chip. For example, if Google (or user/owner of the device) decides to change "OK Google" to "OK Alphabet" than all the old chips will be unable to support such a newcoming. So, I do not agree that the technology exists, these are way closer to speaking dolls than to computers.
      - robofanatic 4y ago
        > And all of this abilities are literally baked in chip. For example, if Google (or user/owner of the device) decides to change "OK Google" to "OK Alphabet" than all the old chips will be unable to support such a newcoming. Its not baked into chip, its software and gets updated just like your phone or computer when its connected to the internet.
jxdxbx 4y ago
The thing is, computers are pretty cheap. And you still need electronics to turn your phone into a laptop or a desktop, which might contain mini embedded computers themselves. Would it really be that much cheaper or even simpler? (Forgetting my nerd-type need to run a Plex server and so on.) Like, with TVs. Like a lot of people I want something more like a display, than a crappy computer running a crappy operating systems, since I use my own set-top box and such. But I don't think the parts needed to turn a TV into a crappy Android computer are really all that expensive. (Also "thin clients" are often just decent computers themselves!) All that being said I personally like the idea of having a giant house supercomputer like the one in Enterprise, with various tablets and such just interfaces to that one single computer.
LegitShady 4y ago
Addressing your two points: 1) One device that does everything will work well if it does everything well. I can take a laptop anywhere and have a usable computer just about everywhere. A phone dock works in locations where you visit often and have a dock, and I wouldn't trust docks in locations I don't control. If I want to work at a coffee store or in a car I can't use a dock. 2) Human design needs to be centered around humans. Humans are designed to rapidly take in lots of information through vision. Designing a device that removes the primary interface between human senses and the device is making that device significantly less useful. I would guess that 90% of the time I spend on my phone is spent reading. I don't want to be read to, but I already have that option if I want. Purposely ruining the device UI and its primary purpose in an attempt to reduce "phone staring" is directly hostile to users. Any sort of general computing device should have the ability to engage directly with your most detailed and useful sense.

GekkePrutser 4y ago

I think Samsung DeX is not half bad for your point #1. The only real issue with it is that the current generation of their smartphones doesn't come with enough memory. Only 8GB (S22) or even 6 (S21FE). You need more for decent multitasking. But I think generally it's pretty underrated. It had done really annoying issues in the beginning but right now I could imagine doing a working day on it. I don't because I am really a power user, but for someone with normal office use I could see it being viable. I wish this feature would make it to mainstream AOSP because right now it's too obscure to really take off. They made a developer thing with Android 10 but didn't take it the whole way after that.

pornel 4y ago
On the hardware side, it's getting close. iPad Pro and MacBooks are basically the same hardware. If only iPadOS wasn't like wearing mittens…
bzzzt 4y ago
> The only real issue with it is that the current generation of their smartphones doesn't come with enough memory. Only 8GB (S22) or even 6 (S21FE). You need more for decent multitasking. Since we're fantasising about future computers I hope there won't be more than 8Gb necessary to multitask. I remember running Windows and Office in the 90s on 16Mb. Seems like the 1000-fold increase in memory was mostly negated by wasteful software engineering...
- vel0city 4y ago
  My personal laptop has 8GB of RAM running Windows. It has plenty of RAM to run multiple chat applications, SDR software, a mail client, several browser tabs, streaming music playback, several SSH sessions, a few RDP sessions, a few text editors open, all at the same time. That's kind of a common set of applications open at any given moment on the thing when its being used. I'd say that's decently multitasking. I don't doubt some things swap (pagefile, windows after all), but whatever its putting in swap is not noticeable. I don't experience stalls.
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    Android is not really optimised for desktop usage, this is the problem. It doesn't have swap and it forces apps to reload instead, which is really annoying when doing work in multiple windows. Like I said below, go to an excel sheet to look something up, come back to the browser and it will refresh due to low memory. It's something that can be fixed but it's really inherent to Android's underlying design as a one-app-at-a-time OS.
- dboreham 4y ago
  Also remember using a VAX with 30 other people with 8 Megabytes of RAM.
aspyct 4y ago
I really like Dex, at least the idea of it. I've been trying to work off my phone for a few years now, my first attempt was with the Galaxy S6, some version of container linux, and a raspberry pi with X11 forwarding as screen. It was brilliant, though a little underpowered. My main issue with Dex is the perennity of the system. Is Samsung going to keep pushing this, or will a native android version takeover? Or maybe at some point they'll say "well that didn't work out" and abandon it completely? I want to believe! Every year I get closer to being able to do my work completely off a phone. I also think 8GB of RAM is plenty. Most administrative tasks can be done on that, and for the heavy tasks, you could always leverage a remote server. Think of github codespaces, or modern virtual machines in the cloud. Sure, you need internet, but don't you always, for this kind of workload? Yeah, yeah, I want to believe :)
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  > My main issue with Dex is the perennity of the system. Is Samsung going to keep pushing this, or will a native android version takeover? Or maybe at some point they'll say "well that didn't work out" and abandon it completely? Agreed, this is also a worry of mine. In fact they did exactly this with Linux on DeX. > Every year I get closer to being able to do my work completely off a phone. I also think 8GB of RAM is plenty. Remember that Android devices don't do swap. What I see with DeX is a LOT of tab refreshing when it starts running out of memory. Which is really annoying when you're trying to do actual work (e.g. going to an Excel sheet to look up something, but then going back to the browser to continue filling in a form, but in the mean time this has reset due to a forced page reload).
  - aspyct 4y ago
    Ah yes, linux on Dex was looking sweet! Right now I'm using termux, which is working really really well. I'm amazed! I have this big PHP app wich runs perfectly fine on it, with dependencies and all, I honestly expected trouble, but it just worked. As for the swap: yeah that sounds annoying :(
    - GekkePrutser 4y ago

Aardwolf 4y ago

I do like having both separated. Different devices for different use cases. You also don't use e.g. the same pair of pants for swimming and office work. Mobile OS's give you almost no control over anything, but you're forced without choice to use them and their apps you have zero say over for half the things today (e.g. parking, banking, choosing the color of your LED lamp, ...). It's great to keep that separate from my desktop computing workflow. Unless I can bring my home computer paradigm to the phone. But are those parkings, banks and LED lamp manufacturers going to allow me to run their stuff on my OS of my choosing over which I have full control?

borbulon 4y ago
You seem to be missing the part where I said a full-on contextual OS switch. To borrow your metaphor, it would be like putting on a pair of pants which turned into swim trunks at the pool, then turned into work pants at work.
- Aardwolf 4y ago
  But then what does the phone still do? Perhaps just act as a key for an OS running in the cloud that you can access from anywhere? Or do you mean to use the phone's hardware for the computing and storage? At the very least I wouldn't want important documents stored on something so easy to lose.
  - borbulon 4y ago
    My gut tells me that cloud-based OSes have too much of a user-server lag? I could be wrong. I don't claim to have all the answers for this worked out, TBH - otherwise I'd be starting a company that's working on this problem. I do think it's an avenue to be explored, though. But as far as document storage, Maybe the dock acts as a home server? Either way, it seems like off-device document storage is a problem that's been solved multiple ways already?

eimrine 4y ago

> I think the next major evolution in phones should be removing the screen. > We need to develop a voice assistant technology which retains context and can "understand" in a more conversational style Former is about output device while latter is about input one. What is the connection?

borbulon 4y ago
A phone screen is interactive, not output only. The idea of a conversational voice assistant is also interactive.

hulitu 4y ago

> I don't think we need a phone and a home computer. There's really very little reason at this point why they can't be one and the same My phone can only run some stupid games and some web apps. You cannot program on it and you have a very limited choice on what you can run on it.

robofanatic 4y ago

> I think the next major evolution in phones should be removing the screen. We need to develop a voice assistant technology which retains context and can "understand" in a more conversational style, but I think that once we've jumped that hurdle there would be plenty of people—for whom phone-staring is currently an act of boredom or filling time—who would willingly get rid of that screen in favor of a voice assistant. have you heard of Google Assistant? It does exactly what you are saying. They do have a screenless device too. Also there is Amazon Alexa that basically does the same thing.

eimrine 4y ago
These things can not do anything except of delivering some adware to be honest. I will change my mind when it become possible to do anything in REPL using this kind of screenless device. And, of course, author tells nothing about online-only devices.
- robofanatic 4y ago
  well, my point was that the technology exists. Obviously it doesn't replace the traditional computer or a phone but you can do things like making phone calls, setting reminders, timers, alarms, playing songs etc. for some of these tasks you don't need wifi connection on.
  - eimrine 4y ago
    > my point was that the technology exists > for some of these tasks you don't need wifi connection on And all of this abilities are literally baked in chip. For example, if Google (or user/owner of the device) decides to change "OK Google" to "OK Alphabet" than all the old chips will be unable to support such a newcoming. So, I do not agree that the technology exists, these are way closer to speaking dolls than to computers.
    - robofanatic 4y ago
      > And all of this abilities are literally baked in chip. For example, if Google (or user/owner of the device) decides to change "OK Google" to "OK Alphabet" than all the old chips will be unable to support such a newcoming. Its not baked into chip, its software and gets updated just like your phone or computer when its connected to the internet.

jxdxbx 4y ago

The thing is, computers are pretty cheap. And you still need electronics to turn your phone into a laptop or a desktop, which might contain mini embedded computers themselves. Would it really be that much cheaper or even simpler? (Forgetting my nerd-type need to run a Plex server and so on.) Like, with TVs. Like a lot of people I want something more like a display, than a crappy computer running a crappy operating systems, since I use my own set-top box and such. But I don't think the parts needed to turn a TV into a crappy Android computer are really all that expensive. (Also "thin clients" are often just decent computers themselves!) All that being said I personally like the idea of having a giant house supercomputer like the one in Enterprise, with various tablets and such just interfaces to that one single computer.

LegitShady 4y ago

Addressing your two points: 1) One device that does everything will work well if it does everything well. I can take a laptop anywhere and have a usable computer just about everywhere. A phone dock works in locations where you visit often and have a dock, and I wouldn't trust docks in locations I don't control. If I want to work at a coffee store or in a car I can't use a dock. 2) Human design needs to be centered around humans. Humans are designed to rapidly take in lots of information through vision. Designing a device that removes the primary interface between human senses and the device is making that device significantly less useful. I would guess that 90% of the time I spend on my phone is spent reading. I don't want to be read to, but I already have that option if I want. Purposely ruining the device UI and its primary purpose in an attempt to reduce "phone staring" is directly hostile to users. Any sort of general computing device should have the ability to engage directly with your most detailed and useful sense.