I was surprised how useful Dex has become, and yet no one seems to speak about it.

Currently the only thing holding me back is that my particular phone (S9+) has fairly limited resolution support. IIRC the Note models are supposed to do much better as they have a discrete GPU for Dex output.

But basically all my day-to-day development tasks can be done on Dex and a SSH/terminal app.

I second your sentiment but the Android keyboard (external Bluetooth) is not very Linux friendly. I googled and experimented and there is no way to have an Esc key. I have to work in vi with control ], like on some broken terminal from the 80s. If anybody has a solution I'll pay with an upvote :-)

You can connect any regular keyboard through BT or USB. The escape key just works as expected.

Motorola Atrix and others too.

AFAICT, there are two main reasons it hasn't caught on:

1. It doesn't follow the normal technology adoption curve. Most tech is adopted first by technically savvy individuals who know how to deal with the "quirks" of living on the bleeding edge. And then evangelize it to the normies.

But a docked phone is for the normals, only techies need the power of a standalone computer.

2: A monitor + keyboard + dock can be more expensive and less convenient than a chromebook.

But it's an obvious idea and eventually it will happen. Once Google and/or Apple takes it seriously and integrate it into the base operating system, it'll slowly spread.

I was just thinking about Dex the other day. By any chance do you know if a simple USB C to HDMI cable will work? Or do you need a Samsung specific dongle?

Any cable will do in my experience.