Intro
While my laptop was being shipped to me I wanted to be as productive as possible using my Samsung Galaxy A35. I was vaguely aware of the availability of Microsoft 365 apps such as Outlook. How far could I take this…?
The recipe
To cut to the chase, I was maybe 60 – 70 % effective. I used equipment found in the typical IT person’s home plus one inexpensive purchase from Walmart.
Here is what I used:
- HDMI monitor
- old Amazon firestick
- cheap bluetooth keyboard purchased from Walmart
- phone stand
And here’s what I really wished I had but did not:
- bluetooth mouse
Which apps worked well:
- Outlook
- Teams, especiallt chat, less so the meetings function
- One Note
- Edge
- VPN client
I must say the bluetooth keyboard worked really well for doing some serious typing up of emails.
How the external monitor worked
So I “came up” (in quotes because I’m sure many others figured out this same thin) with the idea of casting my phone screen onto an external monitor by way of the screen mirroring capacibility available on even the oldest amazon Firestick. On the phone you simply go to Smart View Mirror Screen.
So that prevented me from having to hold the phone at least while I was drafting emails.
But, and it’s a big one, is that the external monitor was not a TV and the sound from meetings was killed by this setup. And I did not see a way to keep audio local to the phone while only casting the screen.
A smaller problem is that the refresh lag is quite noticeable under conditions of rapid screen refresh. So it may take a second or two to show what the phone’s screen shows.
Still, it’s pretty cool.
I would have bought a bluetooth mouse but it simply wasn’t available at my local Walmart. I was pretty inconvenienced without it having to constantly touch the phone screen for various things.
References and related
I prepared the above solution with one day’s notice. If you had a couple days you might check out the Samsung Dex. I guess it would work for modern Samsung Galaxy phones though I haven’t tried it myself.