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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