Using an Android Phone as a Desktop Computer

Equipment to turn phone into a desktop computer, 
Photo by Tom Worthington,
CC-BY, 6 September 2025

After years of trying, yesterday I was finally able to plug my generic Android phone into a monitor, keyboard and mouse, to turn it into a desktop computer. This was with a Unihertz Atom L phone running Android 11, a second hand Dell D6000s Usb-C Docking Station and an unbranded USB-A To USB Type C OTG Adapter.

First I installed  Synaptics' free Displaylink for Android app. Then I plugged a Dell power supply, mouse, keyboard and monitor into the docking station. I inserted the USB-A plug of the station into the OTG adaptor and the adaptor into the phone. After some head scratching and rebooting the phone, I was asked if I wanted the display sent to the dock. 

The phone display on screen looks like a giant portrait phone display. So I then needed to set the phone to the smallest font, and rotate it to horizontal, so it matched the screen. Within an application, such as web browsing or Google Document, the mouse and keyboard worked fine, like a desktop application. But for moving between applications I used the phone touchscreen. If you need to bash out a book chapter, this would be fine. But you would not be wanting to be working between applications.

The docking station plus power supply is much larger than the phone and there are a lot of cables. This would be fine to leave on a desk, but a nuisance if carrying around. There are smaller adaptors, but do they use DisplayLink? Also the station doesn't charge the phone via the USB cable (there are OTG adaptors which allow you to inject power, but I bought the cheapest one). 

Google are working on a desktop mode for Android, currently in Beta for version  16. This will make it much easier to use applications on a large screen. For non-power users, this should be sufficient. You would just plug one cable into your phone and be in desktop mode.

Flip Phone Screen Cracking May be Due to Stress From Hard Third Party Protective Cover

The case of my Samsung Flip Phone cracked after being dropped on a hard floor, resulting in an intermittent fault. So I purchased a third party case to protect the replacement phone. However, I noticed that when folded to 90 degrees (halfway closed) the hinge mechanism appeared to be putting pressure on the phone's hinge. 

After a few days the screen protector started to lift and bubble, along the fold in the screen. I removed the base part of the case, leaving just the two parts covering each side of the phone, this eliminated the problem. It may be that cases of this type are causing, or making worse, flip phone screen cracking. I noticed the same problem with two third party covers of the same design, from two different suppliers, on two Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 model phones.

Ez-link isn't easy

The friendly staff at Changi Airport called around until someone came to open the Travelex booth. They quickly handed me my Singtel combined SIM & travel card. Took some time to get the SIM to work, as the number to use was on a label which sealed the card in a bag, and had to be split in half, through the serial number, to open. Tried to top up the travel part of the card, but the MRT station machines only accept Singapore credit cards, no cash. So I had to wait until the staff arrived at 6am. They only take cash, but I had some. With all that done the SIM and the transport works well. 

SIMless in Singapore

Greetings from the arrivals hall at Changi Airport Singapore, where I await someone to open a booth to give me the Singtel SIM card I ordered. The two 24 hour Traveled booths remain closed.

Eco Rating of Mobile Phones

Vodafone have introduced a scheme for Eco Rating of Mobile Phones.The scores are on a scale of 1 to 5, in increments of one tenth, with a higher score indicating more sustainable.The score is calculated based on 162 questions about the
environmental and social impact of a phone, divided into Product (106 questions) and Corporate categories ( 56 questions). A separate scale is used for smartphones (much as different size fridges are rated separately for energy efficiency).

The top ratings for currently sold phones:

Feature phone: Nokia C2 - 01

Overall ECO 3.9:

• Green design: 3.7
• Mobile phone life cycle: 4.3
• Company performance: 3.9

Smart phone: Nokia Lumia 720

Overall ECO 3.3:

• Green design: 2.3
• Mobile phone life cycle: 3.6
• Company performance: 4.1

Finding Videos on Mobile Devices

Lexing Xie will speak on "Scalable mobile video retrieval with sparse projection learning and pseudo label mining" at the CSIRO on the Australian National University campus in Canberra, 4pm, 19 August 2013.

IR and friends

Scalable mobile video retrieval with sparse projection learning and pseudo label mining 

Lexing Xie (ANU)

Monday 19 August 2013

Retrieving relevant videos from a large corpus on mobile devices is a vital challenge. We address two key issues for mobile search on user-generated videos. The first is the lack of good relevance measurement, due to the unconstrained nature of online videos, for learning semantic-rich representations. The second is due to the limited resource on mobile devices, stringent bandwidth, and delay requirement between the device and the video server.

We propose a knowledge-embedded sparse projection learning approach. To alleviate the need for expensive annotation for hash learning, we investigate varying approaches for pseudo label mining, where explicit semantic analysis leverages Wikipedia and performs the best. In addition, we propose a novel sparse projection method to address the efficiency challenge. It learns a discriminative compact representation that drastically reduces transmission cost. With less than 10% non-zero element in the projection matrix, it also reduces computational and storage cost.

The experimental results on 100K videos show that our proposed algorithm is competitive in the performance to the prior state-of-the-art hashing methods which are not applicable for mobiles and solely rely on costly manual annotations. The average query time on 100K videos consumes only 0.592 seconds. This is joint work with Guan-Long Wu, Winston Hsu and others in National Taiwan University....

New Version of the Mobile Library

The Pew Research Center "Mobile Connections to Libraries"  reports that 13% of Americans have accessed library websites via mobile device in the last year. This might be considered the modern version of the bookmobile. But mobile access is still less than the 27% of people who visited a library in person at least once a month in person. The report released 31 December 2012 is by Lee Rainie, Kathryn Zickuhr and Maeve Duggan and is 12 pages (1Mbyte).

Senate Inquiry into Extreme Weather Preparedness

Frank Yardley from the NCCARF Emergency Management Network at RMIT University pointed out a Senate Inquiry into preparedness for extreme weather events. It invites submissions on the preparedness of major infrastructure, including telecommunications. My suggestion would be that as a matter of policy, the combination of the NBN and mobile phone networks should be made as reliable as the old PSTN was. This should not be just for voice calls but for data as well.

The old Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) used underground cables and switching centres with backup power supplies. The system would therefore work during power failures, floods, cyclones, fires and other disasters. The NBN relies on mains power in the customer's premises to function. While there is provision for battery backup where a voice service is provided, many people will be using VoIP via the Internet, where no battery backup is provided. Also the fibre optic cable may be more vulnerable to damage, where it enters the customer's premises. Mobile mobile phone towers may be more vulnerable to damage in disasters.

Internet on the Indian Pacific Train

My most popular web page is "Indian Pacific: Sydney to Perth by Train", from a trip in 2005. I have now been asked by a reader, if Internet access is available on this, or other long distance trains in Australia. As far as I know it is not. Some suburban services and stations may have WiFi, but I don't think the trains themselves do. Even mobile phone coverage may be problematic on the more remote routes. But Tesltra's coverage map (Telstra have the largest mobile network), does have a long thin line across the bottom of the continent, which is the route of the Indian Pacific train.

DumbPhones: Simple Digital Phones

Rick Welykochy from Praxis Services pointed out in the Link mailing list that there are such things as Dumbphones. These are phones which provide basic voice communications, without web access and apps. Apart from being easier to use for simply making phone calls, these phones also tend to be cheaper.

Simple Desktop Phones

As an example a CISCO Model 7965G IP Phone costs several hundred dollars, whereas a Cisco 500 Series 1-Line IP Phone is less than one hundred dollars. The cheaper phone has no screen and just a numeric keypad. If all you want to do is dial a number to make a call, the simpler phone is as good as and perhaps better, than the fancy model.

Simple Mobile Phones

The John's Phone takes simplicity to the extreme, being a mobile phone with no display screen at all. Instead of a screen, it has a slot for a paper notebook and pen.

The JUST5 J509 is more typical of easy to use mobile phones available, with a relatively large numeric keypad and a small display with large digits.

Google Motorola Droid Razr not a Flip Phone

Motorola have announced a DROID RAZR android smart phone.

The Motorola RAZR V3 of 2004,was a clamshell (flip) phone.

Unfortunately its 2011 namesake is not a flip phone. There appear to be few flip-phone Android smart phones available.

The Motorola A760, was a flip style smart phone. It would be reasonable to make an add-on smart phone flip cover.

Huawei Deuce U8520 Dual SIM Android Smart Phone at Sydney Linux User Group

I have volinteered to give a lightening talk about the Huawei Deuce U8520 Dual SIM Android Smart Phone at Sydney Linux User Group Sydney Linux User Group (SLUG), Friday, 30 September 2011, 6pm at Google's Sydney's office. Here is a summary of what I want to say:

Huawei Deuce U8520 Dual SIM Android Smart Phone

1. Under $249 from AllPhones
2. 3.2 Inch touch screen, Android 2.2.2, 160 MB RAM, 2GB Flash card, QCT MSM7x27 processor
3. User Manual on the FCC web site.

Dual SIM

1. Dual SIM both active at the same time: one 3G one 2G
   
2. Have used it with a Virgin Broadband postpaid SIM (3G) and my Vodafone postpaid SIM (2G) at same time.
3. Catch is that using one SIM cuts off access to the other.

Good Points

1. Reasonable price,
2. Dual SIM,
3. Touch screen is very good,
4. Generic Google Android,
5. Usual smart phone features.

Problems

1. Smart phone functions work fine, but phone call audio quality is poor.
2. Battery only lasts 12 hours.
3. Unexplained activation of phone flattened battery in under six hours.
   

Suggested Solution

1. Convert into a Flip Phone with 3D Printing to improve call quality and prevent inadvertent activation flattening battery.
   

Convert Apple iPhone into a Flip Phone with 3D Printing

Recently I purchased a Huawei "Deuce" U8520-1 smart phone. This has the same slate phone style of case as the Apple iPhone and many other other smart phones. A custom cover to turn them into flip phones, much like the Motorola A760, would make them much easier to use.

Most of the front surface of a slate phone is taken up with a touch screen. This optimizes the screen size, but creates problems. The Motorola A760 had a cover over its touch screen which hinged up to provide the ear-piece. The cover has a transparent window.

Poor Sound Quality for Slab Phones

The major problem I have noticed with slate phones is poor sound quality for phone calls. The speaker and microphone are located at the top and bottom of the screen of the slab phone. The flat glass surface of the phone is not shaped to make good contact with the ear and so does not block external noise. The slate phone is not tall enough to reach the user's mouth, resulting in external noise being picked up by the microphone.

Other Problems with Slate Phones

The slate phone has a large unprotected glass screen surface, making it vulnerable to dirt and breakage. The antenna for the phone is located at the top, near the ear-piece, blocking the radio signal and also exposing the user to possible radiation.

Flip Phone Advantages

The flip phone opens to make a device twice as long as the equivalent size slate phone. This makes it long enough to have the microphone in front of the user's mouth, reducing background noise. As there is more space on the phone, the ear-piece can be molded to comfortably fit the ear, reducing background noise.

The antenna can be placed near the hinge of the phone, at the point furtherest from the user, improving signal strength and reducing radiation hazard.

When closed the flip phone screen is covered and so protected from dirt and damage. The touchscreen is covered and so protected from inadvertent button presses, removing the need for a keyboard lock. Some flips are "active" so that closing the phone automatically ends a call, with no button presses needed. Opening the phone can also be set to answer a call.

Flip Cases With No Electronics Needed

Most flip phones have electronics in both halves of the phone with wires connecting the two parts at the hinge. Usually the screen is in upper part of the phone and keyboard in the lower half. This allows more space for controls, but at the cost of increased manufacturing complexity.

Some flip phones have all the electronics in one half, with the flip cover being just a piece of plastic with channels molded into it to carry sound. The microphone and speaker are located in the body of the phone as they are in the slab phone. But a channel in the flip carries the sound down to the speaker's mouth, or up to their ear.

Making a Flip Cover for Smart Phone

It should be feasible to add a flip cover to a slab smart phone with minimal redesign. A hinge needs to be added to the case of the phone, with a hollow channel in it to carry sound. A transparent window on the flip (as in the Motorola A760), would allow the user to see who was calling, without opening the cover.

Some phones are designed to have user installable interchangeable covers. A flip cover could be designed as a replacement for such phones.

There are also more bulky cases designed to provide additional protection for phones. This more bulky design would provide sufficient room for the flip mechanism to channel sound from the phone's speaker or microphone.

3D Printed Phone Case

A flip cover would be an interesting use for 3D printers. Cases are normally mass produced using plastic injection molding. This requires an expensive metal mold to me made for each model of phone. Instead the digital design of each case can be stored and when a case is ordered, just one produced by the 3D printer. There are already some 3D printing services offering phone cases, such as Shapeways and Freedom of Creation . But they do not appear to have any flip designs at present.

Huawei Deuce U8520 Dual SIM Android Smart Phone

Allphones are selling the Huawei Deuce U8520 Dual SIM Android Smart Phone for under $300. This device has two slots for SIM cards, allowing the phone to operate with two telephone numbers from two different phone companies simultaneously. This feature is popular in parts of the world where there are many phone companies competing. This could also be useful to have separate personal and business numbers available on one phone. One catch is that only one of the SIM cards can use 3G, the other is limited to the GSM network.

I would be interested to see if I can put my Virgin Broadband SIM card into the 3G socket, along with the Vodafone SIM into the 2G socket. The idea would be to use the GSM phone for ordinary calls and the 3G for data. While it is possible to get Internet access via a phone account, the prices are very high compared to broadband only plans. The phone would then act as a WiFi hub to provide Internet access to my laptop and TiVo. Has anyone tried this? The discussion in the Whirlpool Forum suggests it should be possible.

Productivity through Telecommunications

Greetings from the Telecommunications Society of Australia (TSA), where David Thodey, CEO Telstra, is delivering the Charles Todd Oration. Charles Todd was a pioneer of the telegraph in Australia in the 1870s. David Thodey is explaining that telecommunications is a significant industry in Australasia, a large employer and a tool for productivity for other industries. He is pointing out that Telstra expects continuing exponential growth in mobile data. He does not see mobile data as a competitor for the NBN, but as a complement to it. Fittingly I am watching the oration from an ACS meeting in Canberra, via the Internet.

David Thodey, said hat CSIRO was doing a good job with research, the cooperation with industry has gone backwards. He argued that part of the blame is with technologists who don't speak in language which non-experts can understand. As an example Tesltra has an innovation area to show how telecommunication can benefit business.

The first question was about leadership and bringing the new generation of technologists up. David said he was in silicon valley last week and noticed that the people were 25 to 30 years old, much younger than the Australian business people he talks to. He said that the industry needs to promote IT as a career and encourage students to enroll.

The next question was about how Australian businesses can work with Tesltra. David pointed out that we have to collaborate in Australia as we can't afford to duplicate effort.

Buying a New Mobile Phone Battery

The battery in my Sharp GX30i mobile phone now only lasts for about a 20 minute call. This battery is a replacement from Power Mart aka Topscope Pty Ltd, purchased in August 2009 for $19.95, plus $4.50 delivery. The original battery with the phone lasted more than four years, so the replacement only lasting about 20 months is disappointing. However, this is within the expected life of a Lithium Ion battery.

The company Battery Charger are offering a replacement for the SHARP XN-1BT30 battery, at only $7.69 (assuming they still have them). The catch is $10 for Australia Post registered delivery. While I am at it I might as well order another battery for a Motorola U9 as well (for $9.22). The company gets a positive mention in the Whirlpool forum.

I did consider a new smart phone, but the old 2G phone has worked reliably (being dropped many times) and carries out the main function of making phone calls. Also it would be a shame to create more e-waste by throwing out a functioning phone. Also there is an new range of higher function low cost smart phones about to come out, such as the HTC Wildfire S. That should cause the price of existing units such as the Huawei Ideos u8150, to drop to under $100.

Buying a Smart Phone

The replacement battery for my old phone is only providing about 20 minutes talk time and so does not get me through the day. This is a good excuse to buy a new phone, as the current model is so old genuine replacement parts are no longer available. I would like an Android (or other Linux) based smart phone, but not too big, or expensive. Also I would like a flip cover on it. I would prefer a flip phone, but I don't think anyone makes a smart flip phone (Motorola has made some in the past and for the China market).

My first choice would be the Huawei range, as they are cheap and get reasonable reviews. Also Huawei tends to use a standard version of Android, not adding its own custom software to cause problems.

The question is if the cheapest model in the range, Huawei Ideos u8150, will be sufficient. It gets good reviews and they are available for under $200 from Vodafone, my current phone provider (Dick Smith has the unit prepaid of Vodafone and unlocked). One catch is if I can used my Vodafone postpaid account with the prepaid phone.

The major issue with the low cost Ideos is with the size of the screen, which is only 2.8 inch, compared with the typical 4 inch screen of other smart phones. This makes for a more compact unit, although the case has a large section below the screen with buttons, making it larger than the screen would suggest. The Ideos has only a 240x320 pixel, QVGA resolution screen, much less than contemporary phones. But my current phone has a QVGA screen which is fine.

A step up is the Huawei Ideos X5. In some ways this is like the smaller model with a longer format screen (3.8 inches 800 x 480 pixels) filling more of the case (the X5 is only 6 mm wider, but 16 mm longer than the Ideos).

The Huawei Ideos X6 looks much more interesting. It has a slightly larger 4.1 Inch screen than the X5, but a much faster processor and HDMI output. It would be interesting to see if with a HDMI LCD screen, USB keyboard and mouse plugged in, if this could be used to replace a desktop computer. But at a cost of two to three times as much as the low cost model, it would seem to be more than I need in a phone.

Barcode Generator for Web Addresses

After seeing 2 dimensional barcodes on posters, advertisements and even web pages. The idea is that you photograph the code with your mobile phone and are directed to a web site. I was curious as to how hard they were to produce. The most common ones are called "QR Codes". I found a QR-Code Generator. The code displayed is the URL of this blog.

Femtocells for Wireless Broadband

Professor Mark Reed, Principal Researcher, NICTA, talked on "Next Generation Wireless: How can we solve the data crunch?" at the Australian National University in Canberra, this morning. This was timely as I was at a workshop with people from the Bangladesh government discussing "e-Government for Developing Nations". One key point is that wireless allows skipping generations of telecommunications technology.

Mark argued that Femtocells can provided greatly expanded broadband wireless and outlined research areas. However, it seemed to me the major issue was how this technology could be integrated into the business models of telecommunications companies (as illustrated by the lack of a business case holding up progress with the National Broadband Network). In other words the research question is: "How do we make money out of this?". As an example, one way would be for the customer who buys a femtocell to share in the revenue from others using the cell (this happens with some public WiFi systems).

Previously I suggested wireless be built into the NBN modems installed in homes. This would provide public femtocells and a very profitable supplement to the wired service.

One technical area for research is how to carry video efficiently. As Mark pointed out video is the major driver for wireless use. But video has very different characteristics to voice transmission and web access. It should be feasible to make video hundreds of times more efficient with a few simple protocol tweaks. Changes to the network topology would make it hundreds of millions times more efficient. Some changes are relatively simple, such as changing packet sizes and priorities, some will require hardware changes, such as putting caching in the cells. While there are many millions of videos which people might watch, there will be a relatively small number which most people will be watching at one time. Also the system can anticipate what people will want to watch and download it when there is spare network capacity.

Another issue is the use of mesh networks. With this arrangement, the consumer's handsets and base stations can communicate with each other, supplementing the fixed infrastructure. This could be used with intelligent and predictive caching.

Next Generation Wireless

Professor Mark Reed, Principal Researcher, NICTA , will talk on "Next Generation Wireless: How can we solve the data crunch?" at the Australian National University in Canberra, 11am, 25 November 2010. Wireless in one of the options for completing the National Broadband Network (NBN). This is a free talk, no need to book, just turn up:

Next Generation Wireless: How can we solve the data crunch?

Assoc. Prof. Mark Reed (NICTA)

APPLIED SIGNAL PROCESSING SERIES

DATE: 2010-11-25
TIME: 11:00:00 - 12:00:00
LOCATION: RSISE Seminar Room, ground floor, building 115, cnr. North and Daley Roads, ANU
CONTACT: charlotte.hucher@cecs.anu.edu.au

ABSTRACT:
With the forecast exponential growth of mobile broadband over the next few years and the availability of 3G mobile systems that are spectrally efficient, there remains a question of whether 4G systems will solve the key problems of coverage, throughput, and cost. This talk will discuss next generation wireless systems taking insight and input from commercial drivers and needs. It will explore the "data crunch" issue driven by smartphones and social networking and highlight that spectrum allocation and the deployment of 4G/LTE will not alone solve the problem. Interestingly, this initiates a lot of new and interesting research problems that havn't been explored in any depth by the research community, including small cell (femtocell) technology and self organising network (SON) technology.

BIO:
Mark Reed is a leading researcher in the area of WCDMA receiver and network design with more than 18 years of experience with positions in the USA, Switzerland, and Australia. He received his B. Eng. (Honours) from RMIT in 1990 and Ph.D. in Engineering from University of South Australia in 2000. He is an Adjunct Assoc. Prof. at the Australian National University and a Principal Researcher and Project leader at NICTA where he has been since 2003 and leads a team on a research-inspired commercial project. Mark pioneered the area of iterative detection techniques for WCDMA base station receivers and has more than 60 publications and eight patent applications. He has a mix of real-world industrial experience as well as research experience where he continues to put his techniques into practice. Mark has previously performed research and developed real-time world- first Satellite-UMTS and mobile WiMAX demonstration systems. Recently Mark has lead a team to realize a real-time WCDMA Femtocell modem working at RF and tested against independent equipment. This realization contains world-first advanced receiver techniques that significantly improve the uplink throughput and range. Mark is a senior member of the IEEE and from 2005-2007 he was an Associate Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY..