"Samsung DeX has helped maximize productivity on phones, foldables and tablets for years. In Android 16, we worked closely with Samsung to develop desktop windowing, a new way to interact with your apps and content on large-screen devices." <- What does "working closely" mean for a company with infinite SW dev resources? What do they need from Samsung as far as software goes?
PS Let me make a guess for the future. Android Desktop mode will improve and people will ditch Windows and instead plug their phone into a USB-C dock that connects it to keyboard, mouse and display. (I'm on Linux myself, but I see people moving to Android from Windows)
> What does "working closely" mean for a company with infinite SW dev resources? What do they need from Samsung as far as software goes?
Samsung already learned lessons from that journey, Google did not.
Also, the Android strategy is to not compete with Android vendors on OS features, they rather collaborate to make them contribute improvements back to the OS.
This strategy makes the project faster, cheaper, reduces fragmentation, removes a competitor (!), and most of all reduces brand-stickiness within the Android ecosystem (--> if Samsung DeX gets merged into Android, Samsung users can switch brands easier).
> most of all reduces brand-stickiness within the Android ecosystem (--> if Samsung DeX gets merged into Android, Samsung users can switch brands easier).
Why would Samsung want this? Why would they actively reduce their own competitiveness by giving away distinguished features?
Because this strategy is not sustainable in the Android ecosystem, not even for Samsung.
Google applies different levers here:
1. Google is making your feature a commodity: Samsung is aware that Google plans to implement a native version of the feature, with or without Samsung. Google will make the feature available to ALL competitors of Samsung. Samsung get's the chance to shape it WITH Google or will later be forced to ensure compatibility with it (because it's not sustainable for Samsung to coexist with AND compete against an ecosystem used by ALL other Android vendors)
2. Google offers to take over some tasks: Google creates media attention for OS-Upgrades, creating pressure for Device-Vendors to adopt the new OS-version as soon as possible. The more a vendor deviates from the generic implementation, the more time & resources (and money) will be needed to adopt a new OS-version. So it's in the interest of Samsung to contribute as much of their fundamentals back upstream, so Google themselves takes care of maintaining it.
3. Google may make it mandatory at some point: The Android Compatibility Definition Document (CDD) defines the mandatory requirements for a device to be granted into the Android Ecosystem. Google is in control of this document and may at some point add specific behavior or features as a condition for Android compliance. This "Desktop Mode" has the potential to become the default behavior for Tablets, so Samsung may be required to adopt it for devices classified as Tablet by the CDD [0]
4. Google returns the favor: Samsung can trade collaboration on this feature for business opportunities with Google in other areas (i.e. Mixed Reality, B2B, Chromebooks,...), which potentially allows Samsung to be first in an entirely new market...
To reduce disparency between the Samsung fork and the upstream. Google will implement this feature anyway, then why not agree on implementation details to have less merge conflicts in the future?
This is the future that can’t be more ignored. It is like finally bringing call interrupt feature in internet dial up modems but only after everyone migrated to DSL. Windows Lumia was the first device to bring this functionality from an OS developer. Samsung had this for premium hardware. Apple came up with stage manager for iPad but left it out of iPhone. And no one really cares about this feature enough.
What is this feature in reality? It is just a projected screen with a certain resolution. And then it has apps that appear and open as resizable windows. Android had a downloadable app called something like Sense that did this but the app developers didn’t make apps with resizable windows at the time.
I guess part of the working closely is to cause developers to display apps that can be resized. And resize it for them in the event they refuse.
> a guess for the future. Android Desktop mode will improve and people will ditch Windows and instead plug their phone into a USB-C dock that connects it to keyboard, mouse and display
This seems like such a killer feature to me. And every time I watch a video of someone trying out DeX it seems to work so well.
Yet it never seems to take off. I don't understand why. What am I missing? App ecosystem not good enough for business use?
"This is the year of mobile docking replacing workstations" has kind of become my "This is the year of Linux on the desktop.
Because Microsoft is the one who needs to do it - or maybe Apple.
Both have an ecosystem that operates in both worlds (though Microsoft keeps killing their phones and doesn't currently have one) - so they could do it.
It's obvious that the iPad could be a Mac now, there's no technical limitation. So the iPhone could be, too.
> Android Desktop mode will improve and people will ditch Windows
I agree; I would have switched from a desktop PC to my tablet in 2017 using DeX on my Samsung Tab S3 if enough websites would have worked with the DeX browser. I bet it's fine now, nearly a decade later.
Good on Google for not just stealing Samsung's work.
My guess for the future is that no app maker dares to put efforts into Android Desktop mode because they worry Google will leave them high and dry, and in two-three releases the desktop mode will be abandoned because it has no app support
PS Let me make a guess for the future. Android Desktop mode will improve and people will ditch Windows and instead plug their phone into a USB-C dock that connects it to keyboard, mouse and display. (I'm on Linux myself, but I see people moving to Android from Windows)