[General Topics] gaya4:
Hello,

as I was looking for this kind of topic information for a long time and searched through many various topics that are by nature really sounding similar, I though I'd share my experiences on using my mobile as home PC replacement.

This thread is intended as a guide to those that want to do the same. As an idea to those that never considered it and as a collection of issues and workarounds found in the daily use.

Again: This thread does not cover anything like Android ON a Desktop Computer but using your mobile phone as a desktop computer.

In those regards, I'm using one or the other software that is what I found doing its job, but I'm very open to improvements and ideas.

Setup:

My phone is a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 (2,2GHz quadcore, 3GB RAM, SM-9005) and Android Kitkat (Slimkat custom rom) runs on it. USB is MHL compatible.

Other Hardware: Aten CS533 a physical keyboard->Bluetooth Adapter, such that you can use your desktop keyboard and mouse on your Mobile. Which is how I'm writing this text by the way.

If you already know everything or don't care for the rest, read the second and the third post.

Daily driver?

As some custom roms describe their status.... I'm using it as daily driver. I have to rethink many things - the UI being the biggest part. Automation helps to get the connection and screen rotation things off your head.

The phone is being charged while I'm connected to the screen as the Adapter wants to have a power supply.

A big change in UI is that the touch based OS is not working too well with the mouse wheel. In this thread I'm writing I cannot scroll up using the mouse wheel. I'll scroll up the page only. I have to press and hold the mouse (=touch) and pull the content to where I want it.

Deleting characters works as well, but here rather slow. It is better to use CTRL+Shift and cursor buttons to highlight words.

You may also forget about marking text with the mouse as you're used to.

You have to press (=touch) a word and then pull the text markers to whereever.

What works well is the CTRL+X, C and V.

Currently I'm logged into XDA and writing and correcting this text with my external keyboard in firefox.

Which brings me to the most important thing... APPS:

Also there are many differences.... I'm using firefox because it happily accepts keyboard commands - CTRL+T opens a new tab, CTRL+W closes it.

Firefox has one issue which I would bring to the developers... When opened, the shared screen is blank. You can see it on your phone, but not on the TV. Workaround: Switch apps to some other app in foreground, switch back to firefox.

Many apps are better than their web-counterparts. And actually faster. But they often cannot do exactly the same, be aware of that. They offer some features and make it easier to use, but some features you may have been used to, are not available. Example: in the ebay app I can't print out shipping documents.

Roughly mentioned - printing:

There are printing apps included in most OS, you can find them in the store. Mine works fine and I can print on my network printer (don't ask me about USB-printers, I doubt, they work well...).

From my office applications (those accept CTRL+P) I can directly print on my printer, once found. That takes some time, because I switch my printer completely off when not in use.

Chats:

work fine. I can switch, use the mouse to get to the statusbar and open the chat notification, switch back to XDA using ALT+TAB.

Emails:

I was using thunderbird and this one I really miss. I has an unmatched search function. It cans earch globally and it can additionally filter text. Very quick. I have one email account since 13 years. Some emails collected. Here I have troubles.

I want to be able to see all emails offline. This can be difficult as many mail applications don't really give you a choice how many emails to download. K9 and the related kaiten offer this. They can download all mails. However.... This makes the operation in that account slow. Searching doesn't work well and deleting mail leads to app crashes. I'm working with it, because I didn't find a good alternative. Not many people possibly care for that though.

So you see, there are upsides and downsides.

+ Upsides are certainly the purpose driven apps, you have plenty for any kind of purpose. Even you can change the OS layout (If you know linux this is possibly normal anyways;) )

+ You save money and energy

+ You always have your PC with you

+ One UI everywhere

+ Beter than anyone else you know how to connect your phone to a beamer and do a presentation

Downsides:

- It is a mobile PC. It is using its resources much more efficiently than its desktop alternative. Because it doesn't have many. I wouldn't dare doing video encoding here.

- Surfing is slower - sometimes it seems that is actually because of my phone. I've seen other phones with weaker configurations performing faster than mine. Dolphin seems to perform much faster than Firefox.

- Rethink your input

- Desktop Applications are not possible. If you have one specific type of application you'll have to find an alternative on Android or forget it. Games, Photobook applications, Thunderbird, Blurays, are all kind of difficult...

Additional notes:

There are some interesting projects like Andromium OS that want to change the UI appearance, like a launcher that resembles the desktop Windows/Linux with a start menu. At the current beta state, I personally like my old way better, but it is looking good.

Your choice to accept the downsides. I mostly do.

Sorry for this long and splitted post, but it seems like XDA has a maximum letter count when posting but the post warning doesn't tell you so.