what's up guys Eber here with Hardware Canucks and today we'll be exploring Samsung
Dex now for those of you who aren't aware what Samsung dex is it's
essentially an ecosystem created by Samsung that lets you connect or
transform your existing Galaxy devices from a mobile experience to something a
little bit more stationary so you can connect things like an external monitor
keyboard or mouse and be able to use your Android operating system that's on
your device - something with a little bit more screen real estate now I talk
to myself can a basic user who's you know say so for someone for example
someone who checks their email browses the web watch content and just do normal
things just basic things use a Samsung device like for example the note 9 or
even previous s8 or s9 devices with Samsung Dex as a primary system well I
decided a test Samsung dex for myself to see if it's actually worth using in
the first place so let's get into that right after
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alright so before we get to the set a process I do want to mention that
Samsung Dex was announced alongside the Galaxy s8 and the s8+ which was last
year so it's not certainly new in the market but they have obviously tweaked
and tuned a few things to sort of enhance the experience now if you are an
existing s8 s9 or no need user you can actually hop onto Dex and experience it
yourself but the only issue is that you would have to invest into a samsung Dex
docking station because none of those devices come with a built-in controller
that the note 9 does so you won't be able to simply plug it into the USB C
port on those devices and experience Dex right away or activate Dex
so that's something to consider although be mindful that Samsung's Dex
station goes for around $150 which is an expensive accessory but at the time of
making this video there was a crazy deal for this unit for like sixty three
dollars on Amazon so I'll make sure to link this and all the other items that
I've discussed in this video in the description down below if you're
interested in checking them out now the advantage of the station is that it
offers a variety of connectivity options like two USB 2.0 type-a ports and
Ethernet jack an HDMI output and a USB type-c port to charge the device while
being docked it also has a built-in cooling fan solution which i think is
very thoughtful of Samsung to include but if you happen to pick up the note 9
the deck station isn't really necessary because all you need is a USB C to HDMI
adapter or even a USB C to HDMI cable to connect it to an external monitor 4
dex to automatically activate and that's exactly what I did now I should
also mention that you can use the note line as a touchpad and a keyboard but
given how slippery the glass back is the phone doesn't stay stationary and it
just isn't a pleasing experience using it so keep that in mind now for the
keyboard and mouse setup given that I don't have the deck station the only
option I had left was to use bluetooth accessories and for that I pulled out my
Logitech a380 Bluetooth keyboard you guys may remember this from the iPad
video that I did before and for the mouse well I ended up hearing the note 9
with the Logitech MX master 2s now I know this is completely overkill for
this setup this is a $100 Mouse by itself but it is C it was the only
bluetooth mouse that I had lying around Studios so you can definitely get away
with a cheap bluetooth mouse without a problem now setting up dex is actually
very simple all you need isn't putting an expensive US PC to HDMI adapter I
just had this LG one lying around the studio so I had them connected to the
HDMI cable I paired it up with my 4k monitor and Samsung dex was
automatically activated so why don't we actually hop into a demo to see what the
whole experience is like well as you guys can see we are greeted with the
home screen and you may notice that I do have a lot of my frequently used
applications pinned to the taskbar this is an option that you can certainly do
all you have to do is head over to the app drawer you can right-click on an
application and you can add it to your home and then pin it directly from there
to your taskbar so it's fairly convenient now towards the top left hand
side you will notice the navigation buttons for example
the app drawer that literally pulls up your applications which is fairly nice
and straightforward then you have your recent tablet that lets you cycle
between all of your recently used applications which is pretty
straightforward again it's a more scaled version of the mobile experience so it's
nothing to be worried about in fact you'll get used to it right away now if
you're interested in playing around the settings for Samsung dex it can
actually head over to the bottom right hand corner of the screen and click on
this little expand tab that gives you a list of icons that essentially showcases
all the settings that you that are associated with the note 9
so for example if you want to check on battery life you can obviously do that
and if you want to check on your Wi-Fi status or your blue 2 status in this
case I have but the note 9 pair to the master 2's Mouse and the K 380 keyboard
and of course there's a notification tour so it's very similar to what your
experience with the smart phone but again it's much more convenient
intuitive way of being able to see them and of course you do have the option to
clear them as well just as you would on a smart phone so very simple very
intuitive super easy to get used to so there's nothing again to learn here
another cool feature that's baked into dex is the ability to switch your
audio sources so in this case I do have the option to switch between the stereo
speakers that are on the note 9 or the built-in speakers that are on my monitor
because HDMI carries the audio signal so you do have the option to use either of
those which is pretty cool no I do want to mention that the majority of
applications that are geared to use on your smart phone I'm really optimized
for the desktop experience so a good example of that would be if I were to
open up Instagram it literally opens up a small window that is associated with
your smart phone screen setup so essentially consider it as a smart phone
screen like size on your desktop so you really can rescale this or there is a
full screen tab that lets you essentially take advantage of that real
estate and that's and that makes sense because most of these mobile
applications are geared or optimized to take advantage of the the you know the
smart phone aspect ratio so it just wouldn't make any sense to take
advantage of all of this real estate here's another example of speed test
this is another app that I used to check Wi-Fi speeds again I can't really scale
them because it's essentially the exact same size as the Instagram app so that's
thing to consider but there are applications some applications that that
are a little bit an exception here so Twitter for example is an application
that can be rescaled and can be used in full-screen mode if you so desire but
this is again a very it's just a waste of space if you already ask me because
this is just a blown-up version of Twitter
there isn't a desktop or an advanced version of this built into Twitter so
that's something to consider so let's hop it to Chrome and see what the whole
experience is like I'm gonna kick things off with tweet deck and this is an
application that I use on a regular basis to interact with the audience and
the first thing that I notice is it doesn't automatically take me to the
desktop TweetDeck version because if I click on login it takes me to the
Twitter it launches the Twitter application that's built inside the
website does it's like that phone so that is kind of unfortunate it is
something to keep in mind the same story goes for Google Drive I mean especially
if there are some applications that are more app based for the Android ecosystem
the chances are you might not be able to experience the desktop version of that
on on Samsung dex so there are some expect exceptions to that I mean the
first one is of course Gmail so for instance this is very much desktop like
but it's nowhere near as close to what the modern version of Gmail looks like
as this looks like a UI from I don't know 2005 but if you were to ask me
because you've got the blue texts and the whole thing but again it is it's
very much usable you can compose mail too if you want to it's very much
old-school like I mean it really does bring back a lot of memories if you were
to ask me but it's usable you can certainly you know send emails and do
all kinds of stuff with a Gmail on Chrome with YouTube there is a little
bit of a tweak that you have to do in order to experience desktop so you have
to go into settings which with this 3 pin tab and then there is a desktop mode
right there so if you click on it it'll take you to the desktop version of
YouTube which if you were to ask me looks exactly the same as what you'd
find with the desktop version that's on you know Windows or PC or Windows or Mac
so it's very much similar it looks like I'm basically browsing the desktop
version of YouTube so there's nothing there
what's even interesting is the note not actually keeps up really well when it
comes to loading up content so if I were to click on you know a video it's it's
pretty much fast I mean I don't experience the low downs whatsoever I
can view the comments I can click on I can check out the recommended videos on
the side so it's very much desktop like and I really like that about the whole
index experience now you know websites like Hardware index or the verge load
just fine like the desktop version so that's
pretty awesome now let's fire up the standalone YouTube app and see what the
experience is like and I think the first thing that comes to my mind is it's
basically a blown-up version of the YouTube app by itself I mean this almost
feels similar to me browsing on an Android tablet because it takes
advantage of all the screen real estate I mean you've got your homepage your
trending page your subscription page or inbox and all that kind of stuff if I
were to go browse the comments I would actually have to go through the
recommended feed to actually access them or even to reply to a certain comment
and I think that's kind of weird I'm not sure if it was an intentional design
with this app in particular because you could literally have the the comments
repositioned to the bottom left-hand side of the app so I think at this point
you're actually much better off using YouTube on Chrome because it's again way
better than the standalone app by itself now I really had a lot of fun playing
around with Adobe Lightroom for Android and as you can see this isn't the full
dedicated desktop version it's again the mobile version for Android but it
actually does a pretty good job taking advantage of the real estate that it has
so for example if I want to go in and change things like the exposure or the
contrast or fill around with highlights maybe decrease the vibrancy or increase
that I can go in and do that and what's even interesting is that the changes
actually occur really fast and that's thanks to the high end specs that's on
the note 9 so the phone actually does keep up really well overall it's not a
you know terrible experience I wouldn't say it's super smooth at you know 60
Hertz or something like that but again this is this is all being powered by a
single smartphone and that to me is pretty fascinating just being able to do
things like be able to edit photos which is again really awesome now a lot of you
guys may be wondering what the gaming experience
like with Samsung Dex and quite frankly it's it's respectable because
you know like I said I'm kind of surprised for the fact that this is
being powered by the note 9 and I'm literally just having this hooked up to
my 4k display so the graphics are not the best but again very respectable I
mean this is kind of the future that we're all hoping for you know being able
to power all of our gear with just a single device and we're almost close to
that so typical controls like your keyboard controls like your wast set of
keys work just fine when it comes to moving up and down and you know doing
all kinds of stuff but for example if I want to navigate around and change my
angle I would have to hold the primary button and shift the or just change the
angle as you're seeing right now so it is kind of unfortunate I mean you kind
of have to again it's not similar to what you would get with a desktop
experience of pop G it's again a mobile version I actually would prefer playing
pomp G on the mobile side because you you basically interact with the whole
screen if you if you are a pub G mobile player but yeah overall um you know it's
respectable that's that's what I have to say about this now one of the things
that I found to be a little frustrating is if I were to open up the gallery app
which is a file explorer app that opens up again a desktop like experience or a
desktop like window and if I want to quickly go in and adjust or if I want to
drag and drop pictures I actually won't be able to do that like I would be able
to do with Windows or Mac so that's kind of unfortunate I really wish Samsung was
able to implement that with this setup but that is impossible with what we have
right now so the whole drag and drop thingy doesn't really work that well
with dex in fact it's non-existent no I did experience some scaling issues
with samsung dex and a good example of that is Google Docs when I was working
on a script the app by itself was pixelated and it wasn't really pleasing
to the eye and I think part of that has to do with me using a 4k monitor and the
signal by itself being 1080p because it's being upscale too you know it's
being upscale to 32 inches so that's something to consider but what's really
odd is that I am using a USB see two HDMI 2.0 adapter that supports 4k output
so I'm not exactly sure if it's a port restriction or if it's an adapter
assertion because the official Samson adapter does support 4k and Samsung does
claim that so I might have to test that out or I might have to test the output
resolution with the Samsung adapter later on to see if it actually works but
as of right now I was only able to get it up and running at 1080p so that's
again something to consider the new mark 2 courser strafe and k70 keyboards are
fully loaded with custom illumination convenient media buttons USB
pass-through extra set of key camps and ergonomic rest rest for each keyboard so
you can type or game comfortably with a variety of MX switches available so you
can check out which keyboard suits you best in the description below guys
that's pretty much Samsung dex in a nutshell now if you do intend to pair up
a keyboard or a mouse with a Samsung device especially the recent ones that
are out there in the market there are some keyboard shortcuts that have been
imported from the desktop experience for example things like ctrl-c ctrl-v which
is a standard copy and paste or for example the alt tab a shortcut that lets
you switch between different tabs quickly it all works just fine with
samsung dex so that's pretty amazing especially if you want to quickly jump
between apps so things like that are definitely still present with the
Samsung dex and I really appreciate that but if you end up picking up the K
through 80 this is actually a really awesome value or pretty amazing
Bluetooth keyboard so it comes with a lot of the media controls that you
really need for example play pause especially if you're listening to
Spotify or for example if you want to adjust the volume you have those options
right away in fact it does have the home and the recent buttons dedicated buttons
by itself so this keyboard would be an excellent addition for your dex set up
but not just that it's also a great Bluetooth keyboard for example the
battery life on this thing is actually amazing I picked this up last year and I
haven't had to change the battery on this thing yet and it's very durable I
mean I've tossed us around here and there I've traveled with this guy so
it's held up really well so it's really an amazing keyboard for its price and
I'll make sure to link this in the description down below if you're
interested now coming back to Samsung dex and I have to admit that I'm
actually pretty excited to see what Samsung has planned for the future not
just Samsung but other smartphone companies that are intending to
transform their mobile experience to something a little bit more desktop like
now this isn't part of by any means it still has its drawbacks
I would say it's still in its infancy stages because there are it doesn't
completely replace your desktop and I'm not certainly recommending you guys to
switch or ditch your existing desktop setups and switch over to Dex that's
just not practical because it can't you know edit videos or it can do things
that you don't be able to do with a typical desktop setup but either way I
think Dex is pretty cool it still has a lot of work that needs to be done and
I'm actually curious to see what they have planned out for the future and I
want to hear your thoughts on Dex and whole ecosystem
have you experienced it for yourself and what's it like do you like it do you
dislike it and if you have feedback that could potentially help enhance or
elevate that user experience you know I'd love to hear your thoughts in the
comments but I also want to know you know where do you guys see smart phones
in 10 years perhaps the whole concept of being able to transform your portable
smartphone to something a little bit more desktop like would you actually be
able to gain at you know ultra settings in 4k or would you be able to do things
that you normally do on a desktop on something like a smartphone being able
to connect or having that connected to an external monitor and the other
accessories yeah love to hear your thoughts in the comments I mean bear
with Hardware Canucks thank you so much for watching make sure to check out our
new boot sequence channel for the latest tech news and rumors and you can check
out some relevant content right over here I'm signing off and I'll see you
guys in the next one