Why iPhones Need To Provide A Samsung DeX Alternative

Apple should provide Pro users with features Samsung DeX is currently implementing

10 min readDec 9, 2020

I see absolutely no point in purchasing an iPhone. This baffles most people I’ve met.

“You own a Pixel and an iPad? Why not buy an iPhone?”

My immediate answer is always the same: it’s a waste of money.

Why would I spend over $500 on a phone that can’t do anything I want, when a phone below $500 can do everything I need?

My biggest complaints about iPhones have always been the same. iPhones today can handle desktop-level applications, but cannot run them. Apple Inc. has upgraded their iPhones with powerful chips, but rarely if ever does any iPhone user take advantage of them. Worse still, professional users like video editors and heavy gamers have a phone that can handle heavy tasks, but is inconvenient to do so.

Meanwhile, Samsung has developed a way for users to take full advantage of their phone and use desktop-level software through an app called Samsung DeX.

What is Samsung DeX?

A few years ago, Samsung released the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, where they introduced a new feature called DeX. By connecting your phone to a monitor using an HDMI cable, the user can now use their phone as a desktop computer. They can access all of the apps installed on their phone on a monitor.

Credit to Mike O’Brien on YouTube.

The benefit of using DeX is its main feature: none of the apps are bloated. In other words, the UI (user interface) of the apps change to desktop mode, meaning that opening a webpage on DeX is the same as opening a webpage on any laptop or desktop. DeX allows apps to switch between the mobile and desktop versions of its software.

If you open, for example, Microsoft Word, instead of seeing the minimal and cramped features normally seen in the mobile version, Microsoft Word can expand and feature more of the settings available from the desktop version.

DeX goes hand in hand with its hardware: top tier phones from Samsung, like the Samsung Galaxy and Galaxy Note series, have more power than midrange priced laptops, meaning they are more than capable of running desktop applications simply by plugging the phone into a monitor.

Meanwhile, iPhones are also fully capable of running desktop-class applications, but because iPhones don’t have a DeX alternative, we are stuck running apps from our phones, without any way of doing it on a larger screen.

There are plenty of people that would rather buy a Samsung phone because iPhones don’t meet their needs, as iPhones have limited features.

iPhones don’t meet the needs of professional editors

I’ve seen people who do photo editing on their iPhones. They apply filters and provide different shading effects, but never have I seen them open Photoshop or Procreate. I’ve also never seen these people open LumaFusion or iMovie.

Applications like LumaFusion and iMovie allow users to edit videos, whether for personal or professional reasons. I know several YouTubers who hate editing videos on their phones. The tiny screen, the inability to access different buttons, and the inability to scroll through minutes or hours of footage makes editing photos and videos on an iPhone cumbersome, painful, and downright dreadful.

Video or photo editing on an iPad is a lot simpler since the larger screen allows users to look through different settings. It’s also simpler for a video editor to scroll through the footage and cut, replace, or move footage around when needed.

iPhones don’t meet the needs of intensive gamers

Yes, you can play Candy Crush and racing games on your iPhone. However, playing a game like Minecraft is annoying, especially when playing in creative. There is a vast selection of blocks to scroll through that is simply hard to look at when playing on an iPhone.

The other games that are hard to play through are first-person shooter games like Fortnite, PUBG, or Call of Duty. The smaller the screen, the more graphics struggle to render on the screen. It becomes difficult to shoot another player from a distance when you have to lean closer to the screen.

Even then, trying to play a multi-finger game with only two fingers leaves the user at a disadvantage against other players. While I have tried playing Fortnite with more than two fingers, it feels very unnatural and uncomfortable when compared to playing on an Xbox or PlayStation controller.

And current methods to share your screen are pointless

For a user who wants to use a larger screen but only owns an iPhone, hooking up their iPhone to, say, their television or a monitor, does nothing. Sure, it might make it easier for the user to hook up an Xbox or PlayStation controller and play Fortnite on a larger screen, but it does nothing for everything else.

If you hook up your iPhone using an HDMI to Lightning adapter in the hopes of using a larger screen, it sadly does exactly that.

Unlike laptops that enhance the viewing experience by adjusting button sizes, menus, and layouts when plugged into a monitor, iPhones simply bloat the application onto the screen.

If you were playing Minecraft, instead of seeing more of the items available on your screen, you would see the same number of items, just bigger.

The same applies to apps like LumaFusion. After plugging in your iPhone into a larger screen, the hope would be for the experience to be simpler. However, nothing would change other than the buttons becoming bigger. It would still be painful to edit videos on said screen, as iPhone does not have an option to adjust its screen real estate when plugged into an external monitor.

Enter Apple’s DeX competitor

If Apple created an application similar to Samsung DeX, people could take full advantage of their iPhones. They’d be able to edit videos from their camera roll on a larger screen, play video games on their television or monitor by hooking up an Xbox or PlayStation controller, and run desktop-level applications like Microsoft Word or Powerpoint. iPhones can theoretically run more than one application at a time, but because of the small screen real estate of iPhones, it is impossible to implement. Apple’s version of Samsung DeX can easily show the power of an iPhone if Apple created this program.

All a user would have to do is either dock their iPhone onto a charging station or plug in the iPhone directly into a monitor. Then, the user can connect a wireless keyboard and mouse, and voila! Users could run desktop-level applications from their iPhones.

What would be the point of this? I already own a laptop and an iPhone

Remember in the early 2000s, when people individually owned a digital camera, a flip phone, and an MP3 player or iPod? Today, we own a smartphone, whether Android or iPhone, which can do everything those three products did individually.

What if, in the future, your smartphone can dock onto a charging station, and it could become your entire home office? You wouldn’t have to worry about someone else in your household or workplace logging onto your desktop because you could take your smartphone with you. The desktop would not function without your phone.

What if you entered your local café, took out your laptop, plugged in your iPhone, and could access everything. Not just files and photos. You’d also be able to access your games and apps and run them on your laptop directly. No middle man (or software) required.

Instead of editing your photos and videos on a small screen, you could open the photo or video editor you would use on your phone on your laptop or desktop setup and begin working. Once you were done, you could unplug your smartphone, and everything would be stored there.

Instead of gaming with two fingers on a small screen, you’d be able to open and run your games on a larger screen, while opening up your college paper you forgot to turn in yesterday and do a read through while waiting for the game to load.

The smartphone market has not stagnated.

There are plenty of ideas out there. Samsung DeX is one of those ideas, but because Apple has not entered that market yet, the idea may never become mainstream. Developers don’t want to spend their time developing apps for a program like Samsung DeX that might never become popular without competition from Apple.