Someone made a DIY Samsung DeX laptop and it's really cool

You might remember earlier this year that Samsung released its DeX dock at the same event as the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. It connects to a monitor and when a Galaxy S8, S8 Plus, or Note 8 is placed into it, you get a desktop environment. It’s actually a pretty cool device that allows people to use their phone as both a mobile phone and desktop computing device.

But, DeX is designed to stay at your desk. That wasn’t quite good enough for one tinkerer on the XDA forums. User kreal started by gutting the inside of an early 2008 MacBook Pro for the project. After installing the DeX components, an LCD controller, backlight inverter, batteries, and a fan, kreal had an almost fully functional DeX laptop. The trackpad still doesn’t work but that’s being efforted.

A little soldering here, a bit of elbow grease there and there you have it. We don’t mean to diminish the time and effort it took to pull this off. In fact, we’re extremely impressed at this highly technical effort. This cool project is a nice proof of concept that Samsung might take into consideration. I spoke to several people in highly mobile jobs that would love some sort of laptop/phone mashup that would allow true on the go work to be done.

Just a thought, Sammy.