Gadgetory

what's up guys Eber here with hot rockin axe and today we'll be exploring samsung decks now for those of you who aren't aware what Samsung decks is it's essentially an ecosystem created by Samsung that lets you connect or transform your existing Galaxy devices from a mobile experience to something a little bit more stationary so you can connect things like an external monitor keyboard or mouse and be able to use your Android operating system that's on your device - something with a little bit more screen real estate now I talk to myself can a basic user who's you know say so for someone for example someone who checks their email browses the web watch content and just do normal things just basic things use a Samsung device like for example the note 9 or even previous s8 or s9 devices with Samsung decks as a primary system well I decided a test Samsung decks for myself to see if it's actually worth using in the first place so let's get into that right after message from our sponsor 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plug it into the USB C port on those devices and experience Dex right away or activate Dex so that's something to consider although be mindful that Samsung's Dex station goes for around $150 which is an expensive accessory but at the time of making this video there was a crazy deal for this unit for like sixty three dollars on Amazon so I'll make sure to link this and all the other items that I've discussed in this video in the description down below if you're interested in checking them out now the advantage of the station is that it offers a variety of connectivity options like two USB 2.0 type-a ports and Ethernet jack an HDMI output and a USB type-c port to charge the device while being docked it also has a built-in cooling fan solution which i think is very thoughtful of Samsung to include but if you happen to pick up the note 9 the deck station isn't really necessary because all you need is a USB C to HDMI adapter or even a USB C to HDMI cable to connect it to an external monitor 4 decks to automatically activate and that's exactly what I did now I should also mention that you can use the note line as a touchpad and a keyboard but given how slippery the glass back is the phone doesn't stay stationary and it just isn't a pleasing experience using it so keep that in mind now for the keyboard and mouse setup given that I don't have the deck station the only option I had left was to use bluetooth accessories and for that I pulled out my Logitech a380 Bluetooth keyboard you guys may remember this from the iPad video that I did before and for the mouse well I ended up hearing the note 9 with the Logitech MX master 2s now I know this is completely overkill for this setup this is a $100 Mouse by itself but it is C it was the only bluetooth mouse that I had lying around Studios so you can definitely get away with a cheap bluetooth mouse without a problem now setting up decks is actually very simple all you need isn't putting an expensive US PC to HDMI adapter I just had this LG one lying around the studio so I had them connected to the HDMI cable I paired it up with my 4k monitor and Samsung decks was automatically activated so why don't we actually hop into a demo to see what the whole experience is like well as you guys can see we are greeted with the home screen and you may notice that I do have a lot of my frequently used applications pinned to the taskbar this is an option that you can certainly do all you have to do is head over to the app drawer you can right-click on an application and you can add it to your home and then pin it directly from there to your taskbar so it's fairly convenient now towards the top left hand side you will notice the navigation buttons for example the app drawer that literally pulls up your applications which is fairly nice and straightforward then you have your recent tablet that lets you cycle between all of your recently used applications which is pretty straightforward again it's a more scaled version of the mobile experience so it's nothing to be worried about in fact you'll get used to it right away now if you're interested in playing around the settings for Samsung decks it can actually head over to the bottom right hand corner of the screen and click on this little expand tab that gives you a list of icons that essentially showcases all the settings that you that are associated with the note 9 so for example if you want to check on battery life you can obviously do that and if you want to check on your Wi-Fi status or your blue 2 status in this case I have but the note 9 pair to the master 2's Mouse and the K 380 keyboard and of course there's a notification tour so it's very similar to what your experience with the smart phone but again it's much more convenient intuitive way of being able to see them and of course you do have the option to clear them as well just as you would on a smart phone so very simple very intuitive super easy to get used to so there's nothing again to learn here another cool feature that's baked into decks is the ability to switch your audio sources so in this case I do have the option to switch between the stereo speakers that are on the note 9 or the built-in speakers that are on my monitor because HDMI carries the audio signal so you do have the option to use either of those which is pretty cool no I do want to mention that the majority of applications that are geared to use on your smart phone I'm really optimized for the desktop experience so a good example of that would be if I were to open up Instagram it literally opens up a small window that is associated with your smart phone screen setup so essentially consider it as a smart phone screen like size on your desktop so you really can rescale this or there is a full screen tab that lets you essentially take advantage of that real estate and that's and that makes sense because most of these mobile applications are geared or optimized to take advantage of the the you know the smart phone aspect ratio so it just wouldn't make any sense to take advantage of all of this real estate here's another example of speed test this is another app that I used to check Wi-Fi speeds again I can't really scale them because it's essentially the exact same size as the Instagram app so that's thing to consider but there are applications some applications that that are a little bit an exception here so Twitter for example is an application that can be rescaled and can be used in full-screen mode if you so desire but this is again a very it's just a waste of space if you already ask me because this is just a blown-up version of Twitter there isn't a desktop or an advanced version of this built into Twitter so that's something to consider so let's hop it to Chrome and see what the whole experience is like I'm gonna kick things off with tweet deck and this is an application that I use on a regular basis to interact with the audience and the first thing that I notice is it doesn't automatically take me to the desktop TweetDeck version because if I click on login it takes me to the Twitter it launches the Twitter application that's built inside the website does it's like that phone so that is kind of unfortunate it is something to keep in mind the same story goes for Google Drive I mean especially if there are some applications that are more app based for the Android ecosystem the chances are you might not be able to experience the desktop version of that on on Samsung decks so there are some expect exceptions to that I mean the first one is of course Gmail so for instance this is very much desktop like but it's nowhere near as close to what the modern version of Gmail looks like as this looks like a UI from I don't know 2005 but if you were to ask me because you've got the blue texts and the whole thing but again it is it's very much usable you can compose mail too if you want to it's very much old-school like I mean it really does bring back a lot of memories if you were to ask me but it's usable you can certainly you know send emails and do all kinds of stuff with a Gmail on Chrome with YouTube there is a little bit of a tweak that you have to do in order to experience desktop so you have to go into settings which with this 3 pin tab and then there is a desktop mode right there so if you click on it it'll take you to the desktop version of YouTube which if you were to ask me looks exactly the same as what you'd find with the desktop version that's on you know Windows or PC or Windows or Mac so it's very much similar it looks like I'm basically browsing the desktop version of YouTube so there's nothing there what's even interesting is the note not actually keeps up really well when it comes to loading up content so if I were to click on you know a video it's it's pretty much fast I mean I don't experience the low downs whatsoever I can view the comments I can click on I can check out the recommended videos on the side so it's very much desktop like and I really like that about the whole index experience now you know websites like Hardware index or the verge load just fine like the desktop version so that's pretty awesome now let's fire up the standalone YouTube app and see what the experience is like and I think the first thing that comes to my mind is it's basically a blown-up version of the YouTube app by itself I mean this almost feels similar to me browsing on an Android tablet because it takes advantage of all the screen real estate I mean you've got your homepage your trending page your subscription page or inbox and all that kind of stuff if I were to go browse the comments I would actually have to go through the recommended feed to actually access them or even to reply to a certain comment and I think that's kind of weird I'm not sure if it was an intentional design with this app in particular because you could literally have the the comments repositioned to the bottom left-hand side of the app so I think at this point you're actually much better off using YouTube on Chrome because it's again way better than the standalone app by itself now I really had a lot of fun playing around with Adobe Lightroom for Android and as you can see this isn't the full dedicated desktop version it's again the mobile version for Android but it actually does a pretty good job taking advantage of the real estate that it has so for example if I want to go in and change things like the exposure or the contrast or fill around with highlights maybe decrease the vibrancy or increase that I can go in and do that and what's even interesting is that the changes actually occur really fast and that's thanks to the high end specs that's on the note 9 so the phone actually does keep up really well overall it's not a you know terrible experience I wouldn't say it's super smooth at you know 60 Hertz or something like that but again this is this is all being powered by a single smartphone and that to me is pretty fascinating just being able to do things like be able to edit photos which is again really awesome now a lot of you guys may be wondering what the gaming experience like with Samsung decks and quite frankly it's it's respectable because you know like I said I'm kind of surprised for the fact that this is being powered by the note 9 and I'm literally just having this hooked up to my 4k display so the graphics are not the best but again very respectable I mean this is kind of the future that we're all hoping for you know being able to power all of our gear with just a single device and we're almost close to that so typical controls like your keyboard controls like your wast set of keys work just fine when it comes to moving up and down and you know doing all kinds of stuff but for example if I want to navigate around and change my angle I would have to hold the primary button and shift the or just change the angle as you're seeing right now so it is kind of unfortunate I mean you kind of have to again it's not similar to what you would get with a desktop experience of pop G it's again a mobile version I actually would prefer playing pomp G on the mobile side because you you basically interact with the whole screen if you if you are a pub G mobile player but yeah overall um you know it's respectable that's that's what I have to say about this now one of the things that I found to be a little frustrating is if I were to open up the gallery app which is a file explorer app that opens up again a desktop like experience or a desktop like window and if I want to quickly go in and adjust or if I want to drag and drop pictures I actually won't be able to do that like I would be able to do with Windows or Mac so that's kind of unfortunate I really wish Samsung was able to implement that with this setup but that is impossible with what we have right now so the whole drag and drop thingy doesn't really work that well with decks in fact it's non-existent no I did experience some scaling issues with samsung decks and a good example of that is Google Docs when I was working on a script the app by itself was pixelated and it wasn't really pleasing to the eye and I think part of that has to do with me using a 4k monitor and the signal by itself being 1080p because it's being upscale too you know it's being upscale to 32 inches so that's something to consider but what's really odd is that I am using a USB see two HDMI 2.0 adapter that supports 4k output so I'm not exactly sure if it's a port restriction or if it's an adapter assertion because the official Samson adapter does support 4k and Samsung does claim that so I might have to test that out or I might have to test the output resolution with the Samsung adapter later on to see if it actually works but as of right now I was only able to get it up and running at 1080p so that's again something to consider the new mark 2 courser strafe and k70 keyboards are fully loaded with custom illumination convenient media buttons USB pass-through extra set of key camps and ergonomic rest rest for each keyboard so you can type or game comfortably with a variety of MX switches available so you can check out which keyboard suits you best in the description below guys that's pretty much Samsung decks in a nutshell now if you do intend to pair up a keyboard or a mouse with a Samsung device especially the recent ones that are out there in the market there are some keyboard shortcuts that have been imported from the desktop experience for example things like ctrl-c ctrl-v which is a standard copy and paste or for example the alt tab a shortcut that lets you switch between different tabs quickly it all works just fine with samsung decks so that's pretty amazing especially if you want to quickly jump between apps so things like that are definitely still present with the Samsung decks and I really appreciate that but if you end up picking up the K through 80 this is actually a really awesome value or pretty amazing Bluetooth keyboard so it comes with a lot of the media controls that you really need for example play pause especially if you're listening to Spotify or for example if you want to adjust the volume you have those options right away in fact it does have the home and the recent buttons dedicated buttons by itself so this keyboard would be an excellent addition for your decks set up but not just that it's also a great Bluetooth keyboard for example the battery life on this thing is actually amazing I picked this up last year and I haven't had to change the battery on this thing yet and it's very durable I mean I've tossed us around here and there I've traveled with this guy so it's held up really well so it's really an amazing keyboard for its price and I'll make sure to link this in the description down below if you're interested now coming back to Samsung decks and I have to admit that I'm actually pretty excited to see what Samsung has planned for the future not just Samsung but other smartphone companies that are intending to transform their mobile experience to something a little bit more desktop like now this isn't part of by any means it still has its drawbacks I would say it's still in its infancy stages because there are it doesn't completely replace your desktop and I'm not certainly recommending you guys to switch or ditch your existing desktop setups and switch over to Dex that's just not practical because it can't you know edit videos or it can do things that you don't be able to do with a typical desktop setup but either way I think Dex is pretty cool it still has a lot of work that needs to be done and I'm actually curious to see what they have planned out for the future and I want to hear your thoughts on Dex and whole ecosystem have you experienced it for yourself and what's it like do you like it do you dislike it and if you have feedback that could potentially help enhance or elevate that user experience you know I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments but I also want to know you know where do you guys see smart phones in 10 years perhaps the whole concept of being able to transform your portable smartphone to something a little bit more desktop like would you actually be able to gain at you know ultra settings in 4k or would you be able to do things that you normally do on a desktop on something like a smartphone being able to connect or having that connected to an external monitor and the other accessories yeah love to hear your thoughts in the comments I mean bear with Harbor context thank you so much for watching make sure to check out our new boot sequence channel for the latest tech news and rumors and you can check out some relevant content right over here I'm signing off and I'll see you guys in the next one