We asked, you told us: Here's how often you use your phone's desktop mode

Be it Samsung Dex, Huawei‘s Easy Projection, Motorola‘s Ready For option, Android 10’s secret developer option, or third-party apps, there are plenty of ways you can enable desktop mode on Android phones. The feature lets you experience apps on your phone in a desktop environment. Obviously, not all apps are capable of scaling up for larger displays. Desktop mode is also not a full-fledged replacement for a regular PC or workstation.

With that in mind, we decided to ask our readers when was the last time they used the desktop mode on their phones to connect to an external display. This is how they voted in our poll.

When was the last time you used your phone’s desktop mode on an external screen?

Results

For all the publicity brands do around built-in desktop modes on their phones, it’s amusing to see that most of our readers (58.4%) have never used the feature.

Meanwhile, of the 1,876 voters in our poll, 15.7% used desktop mode on their phones within the last week.

7.4% of the respondents used desktop mode in the last few months and 6.5% played around with it just last month.

Others either used it in the last year or more than a year ago.

Your comments

MJ: No option but wouldn’t use it anyway. I own a PC and laptop which are just superior and are the center of my workflow. A phone is just an accessory, and anything I need on it can be accessed via cloud/remote.

Painfully_Candid: I prefer all the power and capability I can get from Windows-based computers, plain and simple. I’ve used DeX on the S10 a few times, but it’s a novelty, as far as I’m concerned. For mobile computing, my Surface Pro is critical. In my home studio (and for VR gaming), my high-end PC is indispensable. My phone is nothing more than a mobile communications platform.

Joe Black: I would use it if it was an option on my device.

Silvio Britto: I use DeX mode every day. It’s my computer since 2019.

Mmm: I use it for several hours every day. It’s my main computer since 2012 after all.

mattc: It works great, but if I’m going to use a computer, I’m unlikely to not have my laptop with me, which is superior. It worked great as a backup when my laptop was having problems.

Eddie Canizales: I loved using it when I had a need for it, but now that I’m working from home, I don’t have as much need for it since I have a desktop PC at home. Used to use desktop mode when I was at work on a second monitor, so I could browse and do personal tasks.