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Not exactly a budget tab, but I've found the S8 Ultra (and the S7 FE before that) to be pretty great. The S8U managing to make having a laptop entirely unnecess
by dotnet00 3y ago
Not exactly a budget tab, but I've found the S8 Ultra (and the S7 FE before that) to be pretty great. The S8U managing to make having a laptop entirely unnecessary (since I'd only need a laptop away from home and I mainly WFH).
With Android there has been a long period of stagnation with only Samsung doing custom stuff like DeX, multi-tasking stuff and striking deals with various productivity apps for Android ports to make Android viable for tablets, otherwise they're only very recently starting to come out of it with Google working on a Pixel Tab.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y ago> only Samsung doing custom stuff like DeX, Motorola has phones that do the same and without a proprietary dock.
- dotnet00 3y agoYou don't need a dock, proprietary or not for DeX on the tab at least, it's just a button there, and I've been able to just use a regular old random dock for external display, external keyboard etc. Haven't tried with phone though.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y agoBut you need a computer to receive Miracast for you. Motorola just has a DP video output to a dumb screen.
- ThatPlayer 3y agoSamsung's works with DP over USB-C video output too. A computer to receive is just an additional option.
- diffeomorphism 3y agoNo? I have an older s7+ and it has a standard usb c port and you can just connect any screen. Nothing proprietary or complicated.
- jlund-molfese 3y agoHuawei too! Just plug your phone into your TV. But behind the scenes it’s built on AOSP code (assuming DeX and Motorola are the same)
- jlokier 3y agoNo dock required. With Samsung DeX you just need a cheap USB-C to HDMI cable. Plug the phone into the monitor and you can switch to desktop mode. It only works on Samsung models that have USB-C video though. My mid-range Samsung phone doesn't have either feature.
- LoganDark 3y agoYou can do this on completely stock Android, Android already supports multi-window completely natively if you enable it in the debugging options and use a launcher such as Sentio Desktop. Though I used to use this on phones with a dedicated micro-HDMI port so I'm not sure if just any phone can be hooked up to an external display (maybe most of the ones with USB-C?) but it's definitely not OEM-specific.
- wkat4242 3y agoIt's pretty great but it also costs a lot more than than a basic laptop :)
- dotnet00 3y agoOh yeah, for sure. I got the S7FE for the S pen and battery life and upgraded to the S8U when it launched a few months later due to a pretty good trade-in deal. So it cost me a lot less than retail. I hadn't intended for it to be much more than a portable drawing, reading and note taking device when I bought it, it just sort of fell into the laptop replacement role.
- wiseowise 3y agoIt has a much better screen than basic laptop.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]