Android's desktop interface leaks

Samsung's task bar (when you enable the DeX integration on a tablet) also supports this and it makes for a fine user experience.

Edit: I've enabled "force desktop mode" on my Pixel 9 Pro and hooked it up to my laptop dock. The UI looks almost exactly the same already. Taskbar at the bottom, notification bar at the top.

It's clearly experimental; my ultrawide screen scales horribly, my keyboard app gets horribly confused, and interacting with the top bar triggers a full-screen tablet overlay that looks a bit weird.

However, Chrome opens multiple windows and browses just fine. There are right-click menus, mouse hover interactions, window resizing features (though some apps require the "force resizable activities" flag). Ethernet Just Works, audio/video just works, and I can operate my phone screen while working in dock mode (so apps that absolutely refuse to work can still be operated through the touch screen).

Except that android phones with display output are mostly flagships with flagship prices.

But 50 Euros on the used market got me a retired corporate HP/Dell laptop with 1080p screen, intel 8th gen i5 quad core, 8GB RAM and 256GB NVME on which I put Linux. Way better for studying and productivity than my android phone hooked up to the TV.

It's a nice feature to have as a backup in case my laptop dies, but I wouldn't daily drive an android phone as a desktop computer for productivity.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/03/the-motorola-atrix-4...

We’re going backwards by putting all of our compute back in the warehouse.

You already need a phone to pay for parking, order at residents, identify yourself with the government, etc. Two companies should not dictate essential life function interaction.

The monopoly grip on this is so tight that it's almost impossible to compete.

I would love to be able to do more with my Google Pixel phone. Right now, the MacBook is my primary workstation, but the possibility of an even more "mobile" productivity setup is very enticing. Now if only I could get an Android tablet with the new "Terminal" feature in Android 15...

The OG Motorola Droid, for example: While it clearly wasn't a design intent, there was really nothing of any gravity to stop people from using it in any way they wished.

Rooting was a simple matter of running a hacked su command, and voila: One becomes root. The bootloader wasn't locked at all. Custom kernels and userlands were normal. It was a great little pocket computer to goof around with for anyone who cared enough to give it a swing.

Just install the "missing" su binary and...done.

At the time, I felt that this was a perfectly acceptable way to keep it working reliably for regular folk.

The security model of Android and iOS is vastly superior, and for "normal" users it is not so much of a problem if they don't have control they neither need nor want.

On the other hand, I obviously don't like it when I don't have control over my hardware. But what I hate the most is when the manufacturers prevent me from installing an alternative OS. I like being able to install something like GrapheneOS.

Also the fact that I'm forced (in practice) to use the Play Services is not really about the device being locked down.

By the way, you forgot Android itself.

An interesting thing is that you can run apps X and Y on desktop screen while also run app X on mobile screen independently.

I feel like at some point normies may end up just using iPadOS or Android as a "convergent" device: a tablet/phone that they can plug into a docking station and use as a computer.

I am sort of hoping that it will work with something like GrapheneOS, so that I will be able to benefit from it on my phone.

Yep, it absolutely will I expect. All the pieces are being or have been laid to build the new world where only a "trusted" device will be able to use the internet. Us nerds can still have our Linux, but it won't work with much of the internet because we won't be able to pass attestation.

Building to that future is exactly what I would expect from Apple, but Google doing so has surprised me. Google doing so is also the thing that will bring it to pass, so there's a special seed of hatred for them germinating in my heart right now. Hopefully I'm just being alarmist and paranoid, but I really don't think I am.

Some Refs:

Web Environment Integrity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity

Private Access Token: https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=huqjyh7k

The final nail was drilled into the coffin when a judge ruled Google a monopoly with Android a year or so ago.

You would think this is good but:

Apple was not found to be a monopoly with iOS. Why?

Because iOS doesn't allow any competitors, how can they be anti-competitive?

The judge explained this Google when they raised the issue, and just like that, Android wants to become iOS.

Good fucking job judge. 10,000 IQ ruling.

My educated guess: tablet/laptop hybrids with Android OS. Not that Apple has huge success with the same move

But this can also be cast to a tv, for example. I assume you can use the phone itself as a trackpad. So the only extra hardware you need is a cheap Bluetooth keyboard which you can get for $15.

[0]https://nexdock.com/explore-nexdock/

That's 14 years old. Kind of crazy this concept hasn't developed more in the meantime.

IMHO both Apple and Google are missing a big opportunity here. Both are doing work to blur the lines between desktop and mobile. Both are targeting laptops, ar, phones, and tablets.

These are multiple modalities. Or they should be. But because the way both are structured, these are isolated islands with some interoperability but the whole experience is very device centric.

What's nicer is when you have multiple devices and a clean handover between them. You basically sign in and all your apps and data are there. All the open apps have the same state. They just adapt to the formfactor.

Apple has been taking babysteps here but it's still hopelessly compartmentalizing the market. So switching between devices is a lot of setup and install friction.

And for Google, they've been banging the drum that everything is cloud based since forever. Yet they can't figure out a cross device UX that makes sense. It should be as simple as sign in and all your stuff is there. That was the vision with ChromeOS at some point but then they lost interest, got distracted by Fuchsia, went off and created Flutter and also forgot that Android was the thing that actually has an enormous amount of users and OEMs shipping it.

The trillion dollar opportunity here: if devices become like shoes, many people probably have more than one. Some people have many pairs of shoes for different occasions. But they have only one phone. Because switching between devices is painful. Adding another OS to the mix just kicks that can down the road. Multi device, multi modal access to your stuff is the key thing that they should be nailing. If e.g. Apple were to nail that, some people might have many different devices in different sizes and form factors. The main decision as to which one to use would be based on which is most appropriate for the context.

If you take something like that as the starting point, the logical conclusion is that Google should evolve Android to run on any type of device and make sure that everything plays nice together. Switching between your Android phone(s), tablet, TVs, car, AR/VR goggles, or laptops should not be hard. Devices running a version of Android exist in all those categories. But there's very little/no integration across these.

https://chromeos.dev/en/linux/setup

> The Google Chrome interface mostly aligns with the current large-screen Android version except for the Extensions button, which is currently only available on the desktop browser.

Google already has this in their Pixel phones (8+). Plug a Pixel into a standard laptop dock (may need to enter dev settings and tick the "force desktop mode" toggle) and you're welcomed by pretty much exactly this UI.

But that would mean all of the Android SDKs would need to be abstracted away from Linux, but it seems like they abandoned some of that effort and are mostly just emulating Android on Fuschia for now.