The Samsung DeX Station will turn your Galaxy S8 into a desktop but it will cost a fair bit

While much of the Galaxy S8 launch announcement was leaked ahead of time, one of the few surprises that Samsung kept up its sleeve was Samsung DeX. With this little base station, Galaxy S8 owners can transform the device from a smartphone to a desktop PC. Features like a proper file manager, a desktop web browser along with keyboard and mouse support help create the desktop experience. However, getting this sort of set up won't be cheap.

The Samsung DeX station is now popping up at various retailers, with a pre-order price tag of $149.99, with shipments set to start going out in early May. When you factor in the cost of a 1080p monitor and the actual Galaxy S8 smartphone itself, this becomes a fairly costly purchase.

The DeX Station is Samsung's attempt at seamlessly turning the Galaxy S8 from a smartphone into a capable desktop computer. Once connected, the smartphone outputs to any 16:9 HD display via HDMI, while the dock itself also charges the smartphone and provides USB ports for additional devices, like a mouse and keyboard.

The interface is designed to feel familiar to most other desktop systems with support for keyboard shortcuts, scrolling, drag and drop for files, resizable windows and general multitasking. The DeX home screen task bar will let you see what applications are currently running and you will see your usual notifications pop up in the bottom right corner of the screen. This way you can still keep track of texts and calls. On top of that, Samsung has designed a suite of native productivity apps to make this a useful work machine.

You can find more details on the Samsung DeX from our previous report, HERE.

KitGuru Says: Apple's attempt to turn the iPad Pro into a laptop replacement has had mixed results. However, businesses may find it more cost effective to go with Samsung and equip employees with a Galaxy S8 and a DeX dock to act as their phone and general PC. Either way, this is certainly an interesting idea, though the dock is more expensive than I would've estimated.

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