Using phone for "primary" internet browsing? An experiment.

[Zaap]

im not sure that a 300$ Desktop will whip a 1000$ cellphone at any task.. boot time? number crunching? games? what will it beat the cellphone at doing?

You're kidding right?
Basically- EVERYTHING anyone who uses a computer to do almost anything actually *productive* does, from media creation, editing, graphics, 3D, CAD to file management/duplication, desktop publishing....


....right through to surfing the web, word processing, office and mundane stuff which any desktop will still do FASTER and with a satisfying experience than *ANY* phone.

Anyone doing more than just opening up 'apps' and going "whee~ it's on a big screen now!" already knew this answer of course.

 

[killster1]

You're kidding right?
Basically- EVERYTHING anyone who uses a computer to do almost anything actually *productive* does, from media creation, editing, graphics, 3D, CAD to file management/duplication, desktop publishing....


....right through to surfing the web, word processing, office and mundane stuff which any desktop will still do FASTER and with a satisfying experience than *ANY* phone.

Anyone doing more than just opening up 'apps' and going "whee~ it's on a big screen now!" already knew this answer of course.

So what CPU would be in a 300$ desktop ? vs the new a12 iPhone chip ? I would like to see a few benches of something comparable. I know apple users complain of the i5 in the MacBook and they wish apple would just put the A11 / A12 in the lappy. I know a 300$ desktop is kinda low budget might have a Pentium g4560 or would that cost to much?

 

[lakedude]

any desktop will still do FASTER and with a satisfying experience than *ANY* phone.

I'd agree generally that a desktop is going to be superior to a phone but your statement needs some qualifiers. As it stands it is easy to prove wrong.

Any half way decent modern phone will easily beat the pants off of any desktop sporting a 286, 386, 486 or early Pentium. In fact a decent modern phone would beat most all desktop computers produced before the turn of the century when the Pentium 4 came out. I'm sure that a Moto G would destroy a P4 single core especially if the computer lacked a GPU. Things get a little more murky around the Core 2 Duo time frame at least for CPU power.

My phone is more enjoyable to use than most of my old computers and this even includes fairly modern i5 based systems with decent graphic cards but using an old spinner. The spinner is the deal breaker and plenty of desktops sold today still have spinners. Our new computers at work have decently fast dual core CPUs but no graphics and spinners that take forever to boot.

If you want to amend your statement to mean a modern desktop with an SSD and decent graphics I'll agree, otherwise my preference is for the phone (on a dock).

If on the other hand you were referring to software that is another matter. There are Windows based phones with docks like DeX.

 

[Zaap]

I'd agree generally that a desktop is going to be superior to a phone but your statement needs some qualifiers. As it stands it is easy to prove wrong.

Any half way decent modern phone will easily beat the pants off of any desktop sporting a 286, 386, 486 or early Pentium.

LOL come on. You're literally comparing a modern phone to CPUs from almost 40 years ago (with the 286) and 30 years ago with the others. OF COURSE I wasn't talking desktops of that vintage, that's ridiculous. (Anyone who'd pay even $300 now for any of those for other than its value as a museum piece would need their head examined.)

I don't need to 'qualify' a fact with 'modern' computer or any such, because anyone being reasonable knows that's what I was talking about.

One can easily get a desktop computer that beats the stuffing out of *any* phone for $300. Spend more than that and it's not even the same universe of computing.

Run multiple monitors at full resolution off your phone, use actual desktop software like the REAL photoshop vs. applying ugly instagram filters and other such minor nonsense people do with phones and get back to me. Run a real DAW or video editing suite. Use your phone as a decent file or internet sever with tons of storage.

Phones are great for what they are, but they don't really compare to desktops for real-world performance. It's amazing on a tech site that'd have to be pointed out. (And yes, that includes virtually anything done on the internet, since this thread is mainly about using a phone for internet use. Phone still loses hard merely to a desktop's wired ethernet connection, let alone hardware performance).

 

[lakedude]

Yes, of course, however you literally said "any desktop"

You are saying that it is possible for you, with your skill level to buy a $300 computer that beats all phones and I'm not arguing that. However you need to understand that not everyone who buys a computer is as skilled as yourself. I'm saying that it is easily possible to spend perhaps up to $500 on a computer that gets beat by a phone. I'm sure that if I tried to purposely hamstring a computer I could spend $1500 and still have you wishing you were using your phone instead. All it would take is a slow hard drive and slow (dial up, which still exists) internet. Oh yeah, an i7 with a 2080 Ti, 32 GB RAM, but a dial up modem and the smallest slowest hard drive I could find. Of course it would be silly to purchase such a thing but you have never met the people do the purchasing where I work...

Side note: One time at a Community Center they "upgraded" the OS on their computers. The computers did not have enough RAM to support the newer more bloated OS. They literally took an hour to boot. Clicking on anything caused the HD LED to go crazy for a long time.

 

[Zaap]

Yes, of course, however you literally said "any desktop"

You are saying that it is possible for you, with your skill level to buy a $300 computer that beats all phones and I'm not arguing that. However you need to understand that not everyone who buys a computer is as skilled as yourself. I'm saying that it is easily possible to spend perhaps up to $500 on a computer that gets beat by a phone.

Look, this is a needless 'what if' type argument. I gave an artificial limitation to the PC ($300) because the PC side can afford the handicap.

Clearly not everyone has a $1000+ flagship phone (which I give your argument the benefit of the doubt) so if we're going to expand to needless 'what-if' scenarios, most people's ultra-crappy average phone doesn't measure up to even the most mundane of desktop PCs. I merely gave you the benefit of top of the line possible with phones vs. "average" PC.

In any case, both could be crippled by poor maintenance, clueless owners, messed up updates, etc. so again let's keep it to the best case scenarios of each.

My money would be on the PC, currently.

But hey, I wish for the day when all of our phones really are as powerful as desktop computers. I've been saying for a long time I want more function out of my phone, not less sold to me as some sort of benefit. At the very least, I want it to plug right into my existing network and act as an external harddrive/NAS device, eliminating the need for either of those things elsewhere.

 

[Red Storm]

I don't really understand if OP is talking about using your phone's internet for tethering as your main connection, or using your phone as the main device to browse the internet.

For tethering, I don't know of any plans that offer unlimited tethering. I think my T-Mobile One plan is now 20GB tethering, but that's not enough for home internet use (for me).

As for using your device as your primary internet device, I currently do that. My phone and iPad are the main devices I use for internet browsing. Every now and then there's the odd site that won't work well with mobile devices (and it's usually something important like a government, financial, or medical related site) so I have to use my old gaming desktop. So I can certainly rely on mobile devices for browsing, but that's because I know I have a computer as a backup just in case.

 

[lakedude]

I didn't really understand what the OP was getting at either.

They say my T-Mobile phone has "Unlimited" WiFi hotspot but I don't know what that really means. Our "Unlimited" phone plans get throttled after 50GB, which isn't bad. The "unlimited" hotspot is limited to 3G speeds...

 

[lakedude]

It is almost good enough for me to cancel land base internet, almost.

Our land based internet has been unreliable so we have been using our phones and the DeX during the outages. The phones have been doing a great job.

 

[lakedude]

Our land based internet has been unreliable so we have been using our phones and the DeX during the outages. The phones have been doing a great job.

When the bill creeped up over $100 I called. The phone rep tried to upsell me as I was trying to downgrade to save money. When I attempted to use the internet to downgrade I noticed that the website only allows upgrading, not downgrading. Their website looks completely different depending which device you use. If you use a fresh computer all the options are available but if you have logged in only upgrade paths are shown. Even as we had trouble with the service not working they tried to upsell us rather than fix the problem.

Anyone want to guess what happened next?

Yeah, the land base internet is gone.

We are now on wireless for $25 a month for the extra line. The home phone still works even without service via the Link2Cell feature. We have 2x DeX devices which operate at more than double the speed of our old land based service (70Mb/s vs 30Mb/s). The downside is that secondary devices that depend on the hotspot feature run at only 0.6 Mb/s so the kid can't watch YouTube videos on his laptop at the same time we make a video call with the Echo Show.

 

[mikeymikec]

I have a C2D laptop with an SSD in that I would far prefer to browse on than a decent phone. My parents have a similar C2D SSD laptop, and aside from pages taking a little longer to load because the CPU is saturated, I can see the whole web page without squinting, I'm not having to zoom in/out all the time or rotate the screen. To further inhibit my parents' laptop, my dad has to have the magnification set to 150% on Win8x and yet it's still more usable.

IMO the computer would have to be horrendously awful for me to prefer a phone. Maybe something like an Atom-type Celeron with 2GB RAM running 64-bit Win10 (which is just processing a feature update) with a hard drive, and a 1024x768 display.

For me, there's just no getting around that phone-size touchscreens are bloody awful for browsing.

A customer of mine has a Pentium-D era WinXP PC with a 1280x1024 screen and enough RAM with Firefox 52 ESR, I think I'd still prefer that for browsing than a decent phone.

My argument does not take into account any kind of value or longevity factors.

 

[ericlp]

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.foxfi&hl=en_US

I use this on my laptop, when I'm on the road. Works flawlessly for me. I have an S8...

I suppose I could plug this into my super fast computer and run the latest games, but... Once samsung comes out with 5G, maybe I'd cut the cord. But, I guess I'm not that cheap yet. But for on the road, I love it! Since, if you use a hotspot, you got to pay more and they cut the data plan in half, with this, as your hotspot ... you get full data gigs, whatever you plan is since, they don't know you are using a laptop.

Note, I could turn on my PC, and share the data to tablet for a true hotspot, also.......... I tether the phone via usb. I think it's faster and for some reason, last time I tried to use wifi, the phone was booting me off every 15 mins.

It's one app (foxfi) that I am glad I paid 5 bucks for! Worth it. This was windows 10 pc, not sure if it would work on mac or linux.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Sorry, I kind of abandoned this thread... like I abandoned browsing the internet on my cell phone. I'm back to my laptop (only 4GB of RAM, grr), and my Ryzen R5 1600 rig (32GB of RAM, bliss).

 

[DeathReborn]

I am currently forced to use my Note 9 to use these forums, no PC, laptop, tablet or console will load the forum but Samsung's own browser does.

 

[lakedude]

Mikey have you seen a DeX? Dex allows a full sized screen along with a full sized keyboard and mouse to be used with a cell phone.

 

[lakedude]

The choice for us is now between a fast computer with a connection speed of 0.6Mb/s or a DeX connected phone with a connection speed of 70Mb/s.

Guess which one wins most of the time?

 

[Moana]

I am currently forced to use my Note 9 to use these forums, no PC, laptop, tablet or console will load the forum but Samsung's own browser does.

have you tried using Chrome 70 on Windows? i am currently typing this on a Win7 computer running Chrome version 70

 

[Moana]

The choice for us is now between a fast computer with a connection speed of 0.6Mb/s or a DeX connected phone with a connection speed of 70Mb/s.

Guess which one wins most of the time?

its pretty obvious..... most of the stuff we do today require a fast and reliable internet connection. In fact, the Samsung Galaxy Note9 is 4.5 times faster than the laptop i am using to type this comment (Geekbench 4)

 

[lakedude]

Once samsung comes out with 5G

Have you seen this Verizon add?

 

[mikeymikec]

Mikey have you seen a DeX? Dex allows a full sized screen along with a full sized keyboard and mouse to be used with a cell phone.View attachment 1513

No, but it's not really a phone then any more, is it? Just like saying that a laptop is great until you're limited by the size of the screen or if you don't get on with the keyboard/touchpad, then plug those in...

So what does the DeX actually do in this situation? I doubt that by simply plugging a phone into a big screen makes it serve up a desktop OS, or if it did it would be phone-dependent.

 

[lakedude]

No, but it's not really a phone then any more, is it? Just like saying that a laptop is great until you're limited by the size of the screen or if you don't get on with the keyboard/touchpad, then plug those in...

So what does the DeX actually do in this situation? I doubt that by simply plugging a phone into a big screen makes it serve up a desktop OS, or if it did it would be phone-dependent.

DeX does several things. It allows for the use of a keyboard, mouse, and larger screen, which is a significant improvement. Additionally the interface changes to be more desktop like. The OS is still Android but the presentation is different, more like a computer than a phone.

 

[lakedude]

I am currently forced to use my Note 9 to use these forums, no PC, laptop, tablet or console will load the forum but Samsung's own browser does.

I had no idea what you were talking about until today. The site is unusable and I nearly said my last goodbyes until I remembered AddBlock for Firefox.

 

[lakedude]

So I must confess that DeX has been a bit of learning curve. The first issue I ran into was that Netflix refused to run in full screen mode. Next up was relearning how to copy and paste which is situation dependent. I still have not figured out how to get spell check to work in some browsers. Facebook works perfectly, Chrome does the underlining part of spell check but not the right click/word replacement. I got nothing with the hardware keyboard on Firefox which is curious because it works perfectly with the keyboard on the touchscreen. I wonder where would be a good place to go to ask about this silly thing?

 

[ibex333]

The DeX came in. It could totally replace a desktop and cable internet.

Ok, but you could have used a much cheaper Chinese cable from amazon to do the same exact thing, minus the convenience of a dock.

The keyboard and mouse would work via blutooth.

 

[killster1]

Look, this is a needless 'what if' type argument. I gave an artificial limitation to the PC ($300) because the PC side can afford the handicap.

Clearly not everyone has a $1000+ flagship phone (which I give your argument the benefit of the doubt) so if we're going to expand to needless 'what-if' scenarios, most people's ultra-crappy average phone doesn't measure up to even the most mundane of desktop PCs. I merely gave you the benefit of top of the line possible with phones vs. "average" PC.

In any case, both could be crippled by poor maintenance, clueless owners, messed up updates, etc. so again let's keep it to the best case scenarios of each.

My money would be on the PC, currently.

But hey, I wish for the day when all of our phones really are as powerful as desktop computers. I've been saying for a long time I want more function out of my phone, not less sold to me as some sort of benefit. At the very least, I want it to plug right into my existing network and act as an external harddrive/NAS device, eliminating the need for either of those things elsewhere.

you say Auto CAD photoshop? we are talking about surfing the internet i thought. when im on a slow pc google chrome will take 30 seconds to load. but on my phone i can touch chrome, open the tab complete my task and close browser turn off the phone before the desktop even loads a new tab. I guess it depends on your hard drive and cpu,