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.