Alright, let me admit it up front, I am quite excited today because I finally got my Samsung Dex to work. But the excitement from making it work apart, it is surprising that it took me over a week of research to figure it out. Samsung really needs to do a better job of putting out information on how to set up and use this really cool feature.
But let’s start at the beginning, what is Samsung Dex?
If you have a Samsung S series phone, you have Samsung Dex. It basically lets you use your phone to do almost everything you do on your laptop in conjunction with a monitor.
There are multiple ways to set up Dex but here I will discuss how to connect your phone directly to the monitor. You can also use Dex by connecting your phone to your laptop or computer, but then I feel that really defeats the ides.
Get yourself a USB-HDMI hub. This typically has three ports – USB, HDMI, and USB-C. The tailend which is a USB-C type plug goes into your phone’s charging slot.
Connect your monitor to the hub.
Plug in your keyboard-mouse USB dongle.
Connect your charger to the USB-C port. This is important. If you don’t do this, Dex will not start up. All you will get is your screen mirrored on your monitor.
Plug the hub to your phone.
Dex should start up on your monitor. The rest is easy to figure out. The cool part is that you can use your keyboard and mouse to control your phone. The Windows key even brings up the Apps screen for your phone.
I am writing this article using the Microsoft Word app on my phone with Dex running. Even the screengrabs have been taken in the Dex mode.
The only time you might feel the lack of a proper computer is if you want to work on multimedia stuff like editing images, videos, or audio. But for most work, the Dex more than suffices.
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