Samsung Wireless DeX For PC Coming To More Phones

Given its track record, there have been some worries that Samsung will abandon its special DeX feature sooner or later. That may still happen but, at least for now, it seems that Samsung will be sticking to its guns, especially since it has become one of the exclusive perks when pairing Galaxy phones with Windows PCs. DeX's longevity, however, depends on the number of users it has which, in turn, depends on the number of devices it supports. Fortunately, Samsung might be addressing the latter by bringing DeX's most recent feature to more of its phones, provided they're running the latest version of its One UI experience.

DeX started out as a desktop-like Android experience that runs when you connect an external display to some of Samsung's high-end Galaxy phones. It eventually evolved to allowing different kinds of connections, like connecting to a Windows PC to run DeX inside. Its latest trick was to ditch the USB cable and connect wirelessly, presuming the display supported the Miracast protocol or if the PC and phone are on the same network.

That wireless capability was first introduced in the Galaxy Note 20 last year and wireless PC connectivity was added to the Galaxy S21 series this year. Considering its normal behavior, it was expected that Samsung would only put that DeX feature in future models moving forward. The good news is that it's not the case. The bad news is that the roster will still be small.

XDA reports that DeX's wireless PC connection will be hitchhiking on the One UI 3.1 firmware. This has already been rolled out to the Galaxy S20 and Galaxy Note 20 series from 2020 and a few Galaxy A phones and Galaxy Tab S tablets. The feature, however, is probably still exclusive to high-end devices.

Wireless connection to PC makes using DeX even easier though some might wonder if that's still practical anyway. Most of these phones can also run individual Android apps on Windows PCs as if they were native Windows applications thanks to the exclusive Your Phone partnership between Samsung and Microsoft.