Review for the Samsung DeX for the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus
When Samsung released their flagship devices for 2017, the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8 Plus, at the event they also announced something new. The announced something called the Samsung DeX Docking Station. The whole concept for this was to hook the dock up to a monitor, plug in a keyboard and mouse, then dock your Galaxy S8 device and it would bring up a desktop like software running from your phone.
The hardware itself is portable and easy to set up. To place your phone into the dock you would slide up the plate and set your phone. The plate at the top of the dock also functions as a fan for your device since these devices do get very warm while using them. On the dock itself, there are two USB-A ports, USB-C port for charging, HDMI port, and an ethernet port. There are no speakers or audio port so sound comes out the phone, monitor (if it has a speaker), or bluetooth speaker. Also, you can only plug in a mouse and keyboard to it, stuff like a webcam isn’t supported yet. Samsung also says that it supports 4K video but it right now only shows in 1080p and there are no settings to change it.
The software is pretty clean. The interface is similar to a Chromebook with in app-drawer on the bottom-left corner and settings in the bottom-right, you can however add shortcuts to the home screen. You can access all of your apps that are on your device, however some are not formatted for DeX’s software and some are just not supported at all. Samsung decided to use their own browser instead of Google Chrome, you can use Chrome but it’s interface is that same as if you would use it on a tablet and it would sometimes just show mobile optimized versions of a website. One of the main selling points of the DeX docking station is that Samsung partnered with Microsoft to make a DeX compatible version of Office so you can edit and create Word documents, PowerPoints, and SpreadSheets.
The DeX docking station and it sounds useful for people who just want to carry their smartphone instead of a laptop but it sounds like a gimmick, this isn’t the first time a company has tried to replace computers with a smartphone. Motorola did it with it’s Droid like in 2012, Microsoft did it to Windows Phone a couple years ago but both of these didn’t make a big impact to consumers. Samsung seems to be marketing this device to businesses who want to switch out their laptops and computers to something more portable and easy to use.
Comments
Post a Comment