- [Michael] Tomorrow's tech is here today!
But is today really ready for it?
I'm Mr. Mobile, and this is Samsun DeX,
the dock that turns your phone into a computer.
Kind of.
(bright music)
Probably the coolest thing about DeX
is that it exists at all.
We've seen similar products
from Microsoft and Motorola in the past,
but DeX is different, because this time,
it's on one of the world's most popular smartphones.
Of course it comes with a price tag to match,
and you've gotta have a spare monitor, keyboard
and mouse handy, plus Bluetooth headphones or a speaker,
since you can't use regular headphones with it.
That's a pretty big barrier to entry for ordinary consumers,
which is why this product really isn't aimed at them.
More on that in a second.
Set-up is pretty straightforward.
The dock unfolds into a kind of landing pad
that you drop your phone onto
with a tacky friction base that keeps it in place.
You plug in a Samsung charger,
run an HDMI cable to your monitor,
and either jack in your keyboard and mouse with USB,
or do it wirelessly through Bluetooth.
Next thing you know, you're using your phone as a desktop.
Of course, your phone doesn't have as much power
as a true computer, but what's really impressive
about DeX is how well it performs despite that.
In fact, the first time I used it,
I kept expecting to give up and move to another machine
because I couldn't do something.
But no, I actually ended up using DeX for a whole afternoon.
The layout is very familiar
to anyone used to a Windows machine.
A shortcut to your app drawer, like a start menu,
lives on the lower left,
and apps open in self-contained little windows.
Some will only run in phone orientation,
but some can go landscape,
and still others can take over the whole screen.
Next to the app drawer are the home and recent apps buttons.
In the opposite corner is the notification area,
where all your incoming alerts stack up,
just like on your phone.
You've got shortcuts to system functions
like wi-fi and Bluetooth over there.
And you can even right-click on stuff
for more menu options, where available.
Keyboard shortcuts are here too,
to make DeX feel even more like a real computer.
And you can set a screensaver
to protect your monitor from burning.
You can even stick a thumb drive into one of the USB ports,
access its files.
As you open them, apps line up in a row
at the bottom of the screen.
And I really needed to open a ton of them at once
to get the system to start slowing down.
Now, this spread of apps is an illusion.
Not all of them are actually active at the same time.
You can see this when you're using a messaging app,
and you're working in another window.
You expect the messaging app to update in the background
because you think you're on a computer,
but it won't, because you're not.
Now, while being able to run almost all my apps is nice,
I spend most of my time in Chrome,
and I'm happy to report that it's quite responsive in DeX,
even when I open a ton of browser tabs
and the dock's fan kicks in to cool off the phone.
The Galaxy S8's powerful internals
really serve it well here.
I've used DeX for a week,
at the studio, at home,
and even at a hotel room in Google Io,
where my auto-correct library embarrassed me
in front of my Android Central friends.
Road trips like this are not a practical use case for DeX.
The dock is lightweight,
but once you factor in everything you need to take along,
you might as well just use the laptop
you were gonna bring anyway.
Instead, Samsung seems to be targeting the corporate angle.
And this actually kind of makes sense.
The lightest laptop is still huge
compared to a smartphone.
Usually more expensive, too.
Samsung is betting on a future where a company
doesn't buy a bunch of ThinkPads for its employees,
but a palette of Galaxys and DeX docks instead.
In this scenrio, all your work is stored on your phone.
When you come into the office, you drop it in your dock,
give it a second to remember where you were
and reload all the apps you had open,
and clack away for eight hours.
At the end of the day, you take the phone home,
drop into your personal DeX dock,
and alternate between Reddit dives and bad Snapchat selfies.
If you need to work from home,
all that work is already with you on your phone.
So you just scan in with your eyeballs and get back to work.
There's virtual desktop support if you need it.
As a corporate workforce solution,
DeX makes a bit of sense.
At least more sense than pitching it to consumers
and saying, hey, pay 150 bucks a pop
just to put docks in all the places
you can already use your laptop.
I've talked about laptops a lot here,
and I think it would be helpful
if there were a laptop dock that worked with it.
Like the one HP built for Microsoft Continuum.
Also, some bugs need fixing.
Android's pointer framework is inconsistent across apps,
so things as simple as highlighting text
or clicking and dragging can get frustrating.
Scrolling with a mouse doesn't always work
the way you expect it to.
And some apps just pain won't run in the DeX environment.
These inconveniences are minor, and it's early days for DeX.
But it left unfixed, they add up
to produce that kind of annoying user experience
that employees begin to resent being forced into.
If you're a company gunning to revolutionize
the way a whole industry works,
you need to either come correct with a solid experience,
or you need to be able to sell people
on what's essentially a first-generation product.
Now Samsung has always been adept at selling itself,
and DeX is off to a much better start
than any of its predecessors,
but it has a ways to go
before it has a chance of becoming the new standard.
I love the idea of DeX,
and what it could be tomorrow is extraordinary.
What is it today,
is a product ahead of its time,
in both the positive and the negative sense.
We saw an awful lot of the Galaxy S8 Plus in this video,
and if you want to see the full review of that device,
check out themrmobile on YouTube,
and please subscribe to keep more mobile tech videos
hitting your inbox every week.
Until next time, thanks for watching,
and stay mobile, my friends.