While it was possible to work entirely on the phone using Samsung Dex, the constant hurdles quickly left me exhausted and frustrated enough to decide to go back to my MacBook.
Samsung DeX promises to be a laptop replacement: Plug in a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and your phone instantly becomes a full-fledged desktop. On paper, it sounds perfect. Modern smartphones are incredibly powerful, so why can't they also double as laptops? That's exactly what many people are curious about when they switch from iPhone to Samsung.
While it was possible to work entirely on the phone using Samsung Dex, the constant hurdles quickly left me exhausted and frustrated enough to decide to go back to my MacBook.
4. Android apps can only help you to a certain extent
Mobile apps are not made for this
The biggest issue I have is the apps. It's not a major bug, but a collection of little annoyances that quickly add up.
People do most of their work in browsers, so they tried Google Chrome and Samsung Internet first. Both felt incomplete compared to real desktop browsers because they didn't support extensions. Many people even tried Mozilla Firefox so they could use extensions, but it clearly wasn't designed for a keyboard and mouse.
This leads to a bigger problem: Most apps are just enlarged tablet versions, still built for touch rather than desktop input. The result is a lot of little annoyances. For example, many apps don't have a right-click context menu.
3. DeX isn't built for a true desktop experience
Some tasks still require a "real" computer
The article also wants to discuss the inherent problems of DeX, which are really confusing because there seems to be no other solution than to accept them.
First, every app has a giant title bar that serves no real purpose other than holding the minimize, maximize, and close buttons. On a 27-inch monitor, this feels like a waste of space, but it gets even worse when you resize many of your apps into smaller windows on the screen. That strip of empty pixels takes up usable space for no reason.
The resolution and aspect ratio are also another annoyance. DeX also doesn't support multiple monitors, and there's no way to create virtual desktops.
2. Poor performance
Forget Crysis, can it run Google Meet?
While it's not really a comparison between phones and laptops in terms of pure performance, there are both artificial limitations and real hardware limitations that cause more problems than expected.
On the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, with its 12GB of RAM, DeX seems to be pretty aggressive about shutting down background apps. When you have more than five apps open, they automatically quit. Sometimes, getting a call will force another app to close, and if you haven't saved your work, it will be lost.
Heat is another issue. Even with moderate usage, the phone gets noticeably hot.
1. The design is far from perfect
Mobility comes at a price
There are times when many people crave a proper laptop, especially when they're on the go and need a balance between portability and real performance. The MacBook fits that bill perfectly, offering just the right amount of performance without being bulky, and DeX simply can't match that.
There are accessories like the NexDock that act as a laptop case for the phone, but it's still only available for pre-order and is one of very few options. Even with such an accessory, it still doesn't solve all of the problems mentioned above.
Perhaps Samsung realizes this too, which is why DeX stands for 'desktop experience' and not 'desktop replacement.'