[General Topics] gaya4:
This is the second post, to show some details of the journey...

From the beginning:

Why?

I had a desktop PC, in fact a tablet PC, 18" and was satisfied with it. Linux ran on it quite fine. Over time I noticed that I normally use it for surfing. Not even for something useful. Most things I was using on the PC I found I was using in parallel on Android. For example, ebay, banking, sometimes the browser, funny additions like xkcd, dilbert, chats... List goes on...

Since I know my phone supports MHL, that is using an adapter to get video mirror from phone to TV over HDMI I was looking for a keyboard replacement. Also I heard before keyboards can be used on android.

Soooo I forced myself to actually to that. I sold my PC and while ebay was running I tried to get the needed hardware.

Doing:

In fact it was very easy to find the MHL adapter. I have already a cheap one with a long cable, but sometimes the screen turns blue. Normally that happens when the screen is on, and the device is idle. I thought of buying an original Samsung Adapter.

There is actually no difference, using the Samsung or the cheap one. It seems to be related to the Apps which are in foreground. Here, it is firefox, no issue with it. These days, I don't see that issue anymore. It seems that it is not related to the power supply. Anyways it worked.

A problem was that I want to use my expensive silent keyboard and not buy another bluetooth keyboard. As you may know that if you search for android hardware keyboard you'll find possibly a million ways to use your phone keyboard as input method on the PC (what the heck?). There are a few breadcrumbs leading you to something useful. Once I found a keyboard adapter that translates only my keyboard to Bluetooth, but since my mouse was futile then, I didn't want it. Same reason why I don't want to use OTG. And I'm already using the one USB port on the mobile for the screen mirroring.

Later that evening I found my current solution, working rather good, the Aten CS533. I small docking station like thing that can get two input devices to bluetooth which I can connect the mobile to.

Be careful when using it: My original Logilink mouse didn't work well with it. Scrollwheel moved the pointer up and down. Any mouse movement moved the pointer down, left and right. Sicne it didn't move up, that was, well pointless. I changed the mouse to some generic Dell mouse and this works fine.

Experiences:

SCREEN: Using some automation software normally keeps my phone working well; since the screen on the mobile is always displayed readable on the TV, meaning not upside down or so, the screen if in portrait, fills only the middle third of the TV. To use it properly my automation software says IF connected to the adapter THEN turn on screen rotation. The phone normally lying horizontally. Since this phones resolution matches the TVs, 1080p it looks pretty good.

Look and feel:

It is Android, a touch based OS, unlike Windows or Linux. So your touchscreen is not imitating a mouse, but your mouse is imitating touch input. My mouse buttons all work as touch. Clicking means touching. As far as I know there are no shortcuts here. To start an app you have to do the same actions with your mouse as you would with your finger on the screen. From the home screen open the app drawer by the button, possibly swipe to the app by clicking, holding the mouse button and moving the screen accordingly.

The keyboard is a different thing. I don't know about others, but here are some shortcuts.

The ESC button is my home button, the context menu button maps the phones menu button.

Surprisingly alt+tab work in Android as task switcher, even though I only have the last 8 apps in there and the behaviour is a bit different from the PC. Alt+tab to open the menu, another tab to switch to the second app. And there is some waiting time of possibly half a second.

The keyboard works fine; page up/down, end, pos1, del, backspace, enter work fine. CTRL, alt, Shift are normally mapped. You can use TAB to change input fields as well.

Missing so far is.... the "back" button. I have not found an equivalent of the back button on the keyboard. Since my phone isn't far away, I normally press the phones back button if I need it.

As you see, operating works, even though you have to get used to it. On the other side, it didn't take me too long...

for more details go on with the third post.