Less than two months ago, promising news emerged: Google is planning to introduce a “PC mode” to Android. The latest preview version of Android 14 (specifically, QPR3 beta 2.1) shows the user experience when connecting the Pixel 8 Pro to a monitor, giving us hope back. like me They have been waiting for something like this for years.
I have followed the evolution of these types of options for over a decade. The union of mobile and computer, power Use your smartphone as a PC, This is an old dream of the industry, and several attempts have been made to make it a reality.
Motorola showed us one of the first implementations with its Altrix in 2011, and then came proposals from Canonical – with the triumphant failure of Ubuntu Edge – or from Microsoft, which seemed to have something important in hand.
None of them were able to implement the idea, but the proposal never quite died. Samsung is the one that brought us closest to the future with the Samsung DX, but Motorola with both ready for And Huawei has kept the flame alive with its desktop mode. The curious thing is that they were all independent implementations of these companies: despite the fact that they are based on Android, Google simply ignores the matter.
However, as I say, two months ago Google seemed to open the door to that future. Everything indicates that the company will talk about it at its then-upcoming developer conference, Google I/O 2024.
Instead, he talked (mostly) about one thing: artificial intelligence.
In fact, there was no mention of a possible desktop mode during that opening speech or during the rest of the event. Google doesn’t even mention it inside it Recent summary 10 great news coming to the Android ecosystem and it doesn’t even talk about it in its section Android in the company —where this option seems particularly relevant — because once again AI seems to be the only thing that matters.
We are once again faced with what I consider to be a great missed opportunity for Android. That will allow the mobile phone to connect to a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse and start working at any time Google doesn’t seem to have any interest in offering this option, Apple doesn’t, despite the iPhone It could be something similar to a PC.
Reasons for not offering something like that They run away from me. It’s certainly not because we can’t: the modern SoCs of our mobile phones have enough power to offer a desktop environment.
Or due to technical obstacles: Our device’s USB-C port and wireless projection have also made it easy to connect to monitors for a long time. Same with the Bluetooth standard, which makes a wireless mouse and keyboard connection trivial.
And yet, despite being technically possible, Google seems to reject something like this. New features coming to Android 15—theft detection or personal spacebetween many— interesting, but the big disappointment of this Google I/O for me is that we still don’t have desktop mode as an option. Especially when it seemed so close.
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