Samsung Galaxy Nexus Used as Desktop Computer

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11 Feb, 2012 7:32 am

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The concept of hooking up your mobile phone or tablet to an external monitor and peripherals isn’t a new one, but the video below showing off the Samsung Galaxy Nexus as desktop computer is a cool reminder that newer mobile devices are even more capable of doing this well.

The Ice Cream Sandwich interface blown up on a large monitor works pretty well in concert with a Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad. A Bluetooth mouse could’ve been used in this set up, but as Christian Cantrell mentioned in his video, using a trackpad gives as close an experience to using a touchscreen as possible. And as can be seen in the video, navigating through the home screens, switching between apps, and so forth work quite nicely. It would be nice if Android had an option built-in to increase DPI settings if the device is hooked up to an external monitor so that the interface doesn’t look overly large on-screen, but it’s possible that there’s a 3rd-party Android utility to help with that.

While right now you wouldn’t be able to do everything on your mobile that you could on a desktop machine, for many people who merely e-mail, surf the web, play games, and do light text file work, this would be a fine alternative to a full desktop computer, at least as much as using a tablet, or simply using your smartphone without external peripherals would be.

Check out the video to see how well it works “out of the box” (BYO appropriate cables and peripherals, of course):

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Via Clove Blog


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  • http://profiles.google.com/joshruehlig Joshua Ruehlig

    i’d rather use a desktop and have reliable ethernet connectivity. It definitly shows though that phones are powerful enough to do what 95% of people need to do.

  • Anonymous

     95% !?  So you think only 5% of all people actually need to do work?

    Because “e-mail, surf the web, play games, and do light text file work” does not even cover all the things people need to do with computers!  At best it only covers what people mostly need to do when they’re mostly not working!

    While ARM devices are only starting to get into the CPU performance range of netbooks, which most people consider as secondary computers and for most would never replace a desktop. 

    So let’s not exaggerate this as being anything more than a sometimes convenient alternative for mainly people who don’t really need a work computer.

  • Anonymous

    the irony being that Nokia demoed similar capabilities on their Symbian phones years ago.

  • Superior Android

     more ironic is that some other company (apple) will patent it and sue anybody that uses it.

  • Anonymous

    The movie about their epic failure is one i would not hesitate to torrent.

  • Juani

    I work as a developer (doing web development and writing QT based GUI applications) and I’ve only used a netbook for the last two years. I didn’t have any issues.

    Of course when I’m at home I plug in an external monitor and connect other peripherals.I have a nice Arch Linux system with KDE 4.8 (even though I used a lot openbox in the past).I choosed Arch Linux because I’ve been using it for several years and it’s perfect for me (especially for a developer: better (imho) editors, bash available at one click, handy package system which make installing everything a breeze).
    Btw, Windows 7 is too heavy and it’s not really responsive with several chromium tabs and an editor. I usually have A LOT of tabs opened while working so this wasn’t a viable solution for me.So yeah, I can totally see using a smartphone as a PC.

  • Anonymous

     Considering that you find Windows 7 too heavy actually means you’ve had issues.  You just worked around them by using less demanding software and not working with anything that requires more performance.

    Mobile OS like Android are even more light weight and less capable than the Linux distros you’ve used.  So are easier to run on low end hardware but that also means it’s harder for you to do real work on them than a OS actually made for desktop use.

    Along with problems of optimization as apps for Androids are designed to work with a touch UI and aren’t as effectively used with a keyboard and mouse.  While the reverse is true for most desktop applications.

    For most PC users though they have little choice but to have to work with Windows and even Windows 8 isn’t expected to be much easier to run than Windows 7.

    While until recently mobile devices couldn’t even match a netbook level of performance.

    You can look at examples like the Sharp PC-Z1 with Ubuntu.  Even a Tegra 2 system like the Toshiba AC100 could just run Ubuntu without being noticeably sluggish to see it has taken years for ARM to get into a better performance range.

    So it’s just the latest present gen and the upcoming next gen ARM that is finally rivaling netbook performance.  However, even netbooks are starting to increase in performance and there will be substantial changes coming next year with the 22nm Silvermount update that could offset the gains ARM has made.

    While ARM still has factors holding it back from higher end usages like the fact they mostly limited to 32bit for at least a couple more years and the lack of ability to support legacy apps from x86 hardware.

    In any case, I’d wait till at least the next gen hardware before considering a Smart Phone for more than we use them for now but not all my needs can be satisfied with just such a device.  So my regular desktop won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.