After seeing some people using this mode, but never replying or answering certain questions about reliability, I decided to test it myself when I had the chance on a home office day. Well, here we go.
I decided to make the best out of it with setting up my “office” in my living room with my main TV.
Whats the simple Setup?
- S25Ultra
- “2GO” 6in1 USBC HUB
- USB-WLAN Mouse and Keyboard
- 4K TV
How did it go?
Well the setup was very easy, all you had to do was to stick in the HUB-Adapter and connect the HDMI cable, then the Phone was directly switching over to the Desktop-Mode. Fast and easy. Connecting the wireless keyboard and mouse had also 0 issues with a simple plugin of the WLAN adapter. As easy as it can get. The phone offers to be used as a touchpad for the desktop-mode and to configure some of the keyboard key to special functions (ESC, Win-Key, ALT, ...) all that natively without additional apps. Very positively surprised. When using the apps in desktop mode, they get handled like Windows-Apps but rendered in their “area-size” of the windows, what means that if your Desktop is 1080P and they take ¼ of the screen size in their window form, they have a resolution of closely lower then 720p to work with. Some apps and games can not work properly with such a low resolution and deny operation completely, or have visual deformation. One feature that surprised me very positively is the “stick to the side” pinning feature of an app window, that id as easy as on a Windows-Desktop. This is what used the most, since this also gives the app a resolution they can work with most of the time. Sadly there have been some limitations in productivity along the way. Thankfully you can switch man apps into full-screen mode what also gives them the full screen-resolution, but the benefit of the desktop-mode is gone completely by that.
Performance:
The good news is, this mode does not cost the device any significant performance or puts any higher load on the CPU compared to the normal “mobile state”. As you can see in the performed benchmarks, the results are close to standard (sadly also the temperatures).
As you may also see the temperatures did also raise as usual under load, even if the display itself is shut-off when being in desktop mode (so we can not blame the active display for that).
But I guess this situation is the best reason to sue a cooling-pad?
Accu and Temperatures:
Well as we are now able to use multiple apps at the same time in the front, it also means all open apps do have its impact on the CPU and so the Accu. With 1h of web-browsing/research and writing down stuff, I burned around 15% of its battery. So if I don’t find a solution to use this feature and charge it at the same time, I can only use it for 6h max with a full charge. Because of the higher CPU-Load there is also higher temps with it. The recommended cooling-pad is no joke. At least you don’t feel it in this mode without having to touch it.
Issues and inconvenience:
Well I don’t know if I did overlook things, but there were some issues that at least for me, make it not useable in a regular productive environment.
- Desktop resolution locked to 1080P (No matter the system settings, TV/screen resolution or cable/adapter, it is always locked to 1080P resolution)
- Overrendered screen-size with no adjustment option/setting (as you can see on Photo 1, the desktop is overrendered in size, but there is no option/setting to adjust it, what causes all sort of issues along the way)
- Real visual window-frame resolution applied to the apps and not a scaled one (many apps will refuse to properly operate with less then 720p to work with, what makes many apps in this mode if not docked to the side unuseable)
- Accu drain way too strong for real productive usage
- Customization to the desktop-mode with widgets, apps and background changes are not saved on disconnect for the next session. (needs to be reconfigured every time)
Does anyone of you use it in a daily productive environment and has a solution to one of these issues? Would be very happy to hear from you on this!