There's simply no real reason that a mobile device can't function as a desktop from a technical level either in software or hardware. Simply dock your phone or it could be even wireless. Boom! Go from mobile experience to desktop experience. It seems they want to cram the mobile experience into a traditional desktop environment (mouse and keyboard driven with windows paradigm). IOS and Android have not embraced desktop paradigm. We simply need a unified SDK to support both experiences and the store downloads the appropriate assets. We're beginning to see somewhat of these concepts with foldables phone coming into the market.
That's sort of the point of the Googlebooks. They run Android internally, and then to get Android to support Googlebooks, they had to add/improve things like multi-window support, very large monitors, keyboards, mouse support, etc.
If you have a USB dock that your keyboard/mouse/display is plugged in to, you should be able to stick it in your Pixel phone's USB jack and get a desktop experience. Some of my team would actually test keyboard support that way, by plugging a keyboard into a tablet.
Android actually does have a desktop mode when you connect an external display. I'm not sure how much this is standardized / merged into AOSP, but I use it with my stock Pixel 10 Pro.
I would describe the experience as... passable. Historically it was quite glitchy but recent OS updates have improved it. The biggest issues resolve around apps which do not scale their UIs correctly.
FloatArtifact · · focus · HN ↗
nostrademons · · focus · HN ↗
If you have a USB dock that your keyboard/mouse/display is plugged in to, you should be able to stick it in your Pixel phone's USB jack and get a desktop experience. Some of my team would actually test keyboard support that way, by plugging a keyboard into a tablet.
FloatArtifact · · focus · HN ↗
JeremyNT · · focus · HN ↗
I would describe the experience as... passable. Historically it was quite glitchy but recent OS updates have improved it. The biggest issues resolve around apps which do not scale their UIs correctly.