Samsung’s DeX Dock turns your Galaxy S8 into a desktop computer

Alongside the Galaxy S8, Samsung announced a new accessory to use with the thing: the DeX Dock. This dock is a cradle for your smartphone which — when placed and hooked up to a monitor — lets you turn it into a desktop computer, of sorts.

When docked, any apps you’re using can be stretched out onto the big screen, an effect that’ll be doubly sexy for apps designed to support big-screen UIs. Samsung worked with Microsoft and Adobe to make sure their apps look good, for instance, and various other Android apps should be able to adapt quite well if they follow basic protocols for Nougat development.

Anything else is likely to show up like they would on a tablet: a stretched out smartphone user interface. It’ll be usable, but not necessarily pretty and doesn’t make nearly enough use of valuable screen real estate.

The dock itself has an HDMI-out port for the display bits, but also 2 USB ports for peripherals and a USB-C connector to move the power and data.

Samsung didn’t have word on pricing just yet, but if it’s not too expensive this could be the perfect companion for any Galaxy S8 owner who finds themselves needing to do a lot of their work on their phone. The biggest problem we see with it all is finding a monitor to hook up to while you’re traveling, though you have plenty screen to do that on the phone itself otherwise.