- External GPUs are still pretty bad

- Tablets with cellular connectivity are if anything less well supported than before. I think this is mainly because carriers aren't really supporting the idea of one person/account having multiple "phones". Smartwatches have the same problem - I remember going to a Samsung store and they were showing off a smartwatch that had its own SIM card and cellular modem, but the staff couldn't tell me what kind of phone contract you had to have to make it work

- Small devices still mean a noticeable compromise in power. I've tried using Samsung Dex as well and it's... ok, but appreciably worse than even a netbook, even if on paper the processor/memory/etc. ought to be catching up. Laptop as primary computer only really took off once you genuinely couldn't notice any performance disadvantage compared to a desktop, at least in my friend group; I think it'll be the same with tablet and (eventually) phone/watch/ring form factors

I might be missing something about cultural differences but... why would you expect an electronics store to tell you what kind of plans your telco has?

Here in Switzerland pretty much every telco offers an additional SIM for tablets and watches, but you need to talk to the mobile operator not the electronics store ^^

It’s quite possible the Samsung watches don’t rely on this system, but I’m not sure and may have also assumed it was worth asking like the GP.

Prices for just a SIM without buying a phone seem to be pretty high.

Here selling SIM-locked phones is not even legal. In most European countries it is legal, but still less common than in the US. So operators have to serve customers not buying a device from them on competitive terms.

This was true 5-10 years ago. Nowadays, nearly every mobile network regularly has offers to entice users to bring their device from a different network in exchange for a cheaper monthly plan or similar.

Another issue is that both the watch and the phone need to share a phone number if you want to leave your phone at home and answer calls and receive SMS on the watch. This isn’t standardized and only works with each watch’s supported carriers.

Not my experience. I'm sure it depends a bit on your carrier, but on T-Mobile it was easy to order a data sim for a tablet from their website. Setting up a smart watch was even easier with eSIM, it just sets up everything for you when you pair with your phone.

(1) SIM locks exist in some countries. But they are commercial practices, not technical incompatibility.

Also Samsung is really good at adding features and then locking them down in weird ways, breaking basic features or just providing horrible user experience.

Maybe they've gotten better, but the last time I looked at reviews they were generally flaky (driver issues or incompatibilities with particular games) and had performance issues, to the point that a lower-model built-in card would often outperform a higher-model in an external enclosure. I'm sure they're coming eventually, but I haven't heard of anyone having an actually polished experience with one in day-to-day use yet.

1) Forwarding X11 to a desktop is easier (and all the apps run on X anyway)

2) Since it’s just Linux all the apps can run on a desktop just like the phone, all my stuff is synced with git or rsync, and if there’s something I need outside the usual folders it’s just an scp away. There’s absolutely no reason to use one particular machine over the other other than form factor and computing resources.

It just makes a lot of sense to have a decent desktop permanently plugged in that you can use without any hassle. Devices like that will kill laptops though, I know it did for me. Of course I don’t think this will happen with Android. Google is way too greedy and they’ll find a way to make it unusable.

The hardware in mobile phones needs to improve substantially for the scenario I described to be practical; there's no hardware that supports it today, but the software in TFA is a step in the direction.

(As far as I'm aware, they still do this on Pixel 6.)

I already use my laptop as a desktop when I'm at home by connecting it to a USB-C hub, which in turn connects it to my monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc. I think the smartphone as a "single device which can be used for everything" is a cool concept and definitely possible considering how powerful modern smartphones are. The limitation is software.

It is stuff like O365, Github, OneDrive, AWS etc that enable that. No plugging in, no reconfiguring devices. Moving between windows 11, android and debian everything I want is right there.

I can't see the advantage, yet, of trying to consoldate down to one device.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/continuum

Want to execute your own code? Fine! Buy a license!

That's what you're looking forward to.

So it is "the future" in the same way 3D TVs were: Much hype and then kinda neat, but not great.

The world doesn't exist. And it's not that much more expensive for the workplace to add the computer, and it's much more convenient to just carry our own ultraportable laptops so that we could work at coffee shops and on the planes.

But perhaps there is an use case out for parents with multiple kids who don't want to use low-powered or hand-me-down computers...

For that you want something that is ubiquitous anyways and works with everything. For samsung that was HDMI and usb (kinda works, but too many cables) a few years ago and nowadays is just a single usb c cable. Works with laptops, tablets and phones.

Counter question: Why aren't docking stations for laptops common in hotels/coffee shops/wherever? Or am just not staying in the "right" hotels? To me it just seems that the demand is pretty tiny.

Well, there is an attack called the "evil maid" attack. This attack can happen whenever your hardware is unattended for some period of time. A hotel where maids enter the room every day unattended is quite literally the scenario for this attack. Imagine the surface area for attack, where a dock gets modified, then an unsuspecting user plugs into the dock.

Not only is the demand tiny, but the liability is incredibly high for hotels.

The hardware was nice though.

1.) Run windows/linux distro on the go.

2.) Can play graphically demanding titles in 720P.

3.) Has a dock which supports ethernet, Mouse/Keebs, HDMI out.

4.) Can have upto 4TB internal SSD with tweaks.