Samsung's DeX Station now works with the Microsoft Lumia 950, wait what

by Kaloyan C. / May 23, 2017, 2:48 AM

As you may already know, Samsung's attempt at entering the smartphone-as-a-desktop market, the Samsung DeX Station, only supports its latest flagship, the Galaxy S8. Or at least that's what we were led to believe up until now – a video that just popped up on YouTube seems to show the DeX working with the Microsoft Lumia 950 – yes, you read that right. So are Samsung just a bunch of big, fat liars?

Well, not really. While Samsung choosing to support a rival company's two-years-old failed flagship would be a sweet and heartwarming Silicon Valley story, the video itself (potato quality warning, by the way) clearly shows the Lumia running Microsoft's own, older take on the DeX's general idea, called Continuum. Hey, remember Continuum? It was one of Windows 10 Mobile's biggest features, though it's safe to say it didn't exactly catch on.

So why exactly is it able to run on the DeX Station, which was designed for a phone released two years later which also runs a completely different OS? The answer to that is pretty simple, actually – while Samsung would really like you to believe otherwise, the $150 price tag on the DeX is really just for the hardware itself – the actual desktop experience runs entirely on the S8 itself, while the dock's only use is as an easy way to connect a monitor, mouse, and keyboard.

Or in other words, since the DeX Station is really just a fancy USB-C adapter, the Lumia has no trouble recognizing and using it for its own purposes. And thus, the list of DeX-supported devices has grown by at least one, kind of. And before you ask – according to the YouTube comments, connecting a Galaxy S8 to a Continuum dock doesn't yield the same successful results, unfortunately.

source: YouTube via Gizmodo UK

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15 Comments

1. Tariq123

Posts: 186; Member since: May 15, 2016

If Note 8 supports Dex then I'm getting it

posted on May 23, 2017, 2:59 AM 0

2. trojan_horse

Posts: 5868; Member since: May 06, 2016

The Note 8 will obviously support DeX... To my knowledge, there is nothing the Galaxy S series has ever had which the Note series hasn't gotten too.

posted on May 23, 2017, 4:00 AM 3

7. MrElectrifyer

Posts: 3960; Member since: Oct 21, 2014

Except the IR blaster; dropped from Note 5 even though S6 had it.

posted on May 23, 2017, 6:27 AM 0

11. UglyFrank

Posts: 2200; Member since: Jan 23, 2014

Note 4 didn't have Waterproofing like the S5

posted on May 23, 2017, 7:49 AM 0

3. japkoslav

Posts: 1553; Member since: Feb 19, 2017

Hopefuly there will be DeX 2.0 by the time Note 8 hits the market. 4K@60, USB 3.0, GLan and analog audio output is a must for me. To be honest i have no idea why they thought such a low spec dock is suitable for such a high end phone.

posted on May 23, 2017, 4:36 AM 0

6. Nopers unregistered

For DeX to get USB 3.0 and 4K@60Hz you'd probably need TB3 speeds over the Note 8 which is a little unreasonable.

posted on May 23, 2017, 5:12 AM 0

12. japkoslav

Not realy, you simply need DP 1.2 output. + USB-C first gen is 5Gbps for data, while TB3 is 40Gbps data rate. USB-C first gen can output 4K@60 (if implemented correctly). SOC can handle it ++ ;) one of the rumors says that Note 8 might have built-in 4K screen. 4K@30, USB 2.0 is just Samsung being lazy.

posted on May 23, 2017, 7:54 AM 0

4. Bankz

Posts: 2550; Member since: Apr 08, 2016

The note 8 certainly win and also trojan is right. Even the gs6 didnt have anything on the lacklustre note 5.

posted on May 23, 2017, 5:01 AM 0

5. Bankz

*will

8. zenun12

Posts: 205; Member since: Oct 31, 2016

Does the Elite x3 work on the dock too?

posted on May 23, 2017, 6:52 AM 1

9. MrElectrifyer

It should work, the dock is nothing more than a USB docking station...

posted on May 23, 2017, 7:28 AM 0

10. ibend

Posts: 6747; Member since: Sep 30, 2014

did you guys tested it? or you just believe some random stranger's video with 5k views and 2 subscribers?

posted on May 23, 2017, 7:31 AM 0

13. omnitech

Posts: 1131; Member since: Sep 28, 2016

If you plug a pixel in it then you can probably get a 5inch display of your phone on the monitor then? Not sure why you would want that but should work in theory right?

posted on May 23, 2017, 10:18 AM 0

15. Crispin_Gatieza

Posts: 3187; Member since: Jan 23, 2014

HDMI mirroring has been out for quite some time. The problem is scaling to a large screen and neither Android, iOS, BlackBerry 10 or the older Windows Phone 8.1 did it well. Continuum is the only system that scales properly across all display resolutions. Sentio (formerly Andromium) is horrible unless you're on a full HD (1080p) display. Chalk one up for Microsoft, hence the relevance of this article.