This caught my eye in Tokmanni, and thought why not try yet another adapter. I already have the USB-C to HDMI adapter for using Samsung Dex with an external display, but I was kind of stuck with wireless mice and keyboard so I largely forgot the whole thing.
Back then I was also worried that a USB hub would be too large, but this is not much bulkier than that video-only adapter.
So, apart from HDMI it has one USB-A style port and a USB-C.
The happy outcome here is that the USB-C to HDMI works with the Samsung Dex phone desktop for displays, and the Samsung S23FE also joyfully accepts USB keyboards, gamepads and mice. This is not something that was explicitly promised on the box, but I think it can be taken granted these days. Or can it?
I have to make the choices carefully as I have to use both port types. So one C-connector mouse and A-connector keyboard, or other way round, but not both of either type.
Does this make Samsung Dex much better? Well, at least the experience improves. Perhaps I'm more intrigued about the possibility of using a keyboard without actually invoking the Samsung Dex desktop.
It's still not a very coherent experience. For example the Slack app doesn't work well with a physical keyboard, after typing one letter it insists on opening the virtual keyboard after all.
I could have connected a keyboard without the adapter, but somehow my Samsung was picky about sticking some USB-C keyboards into it directly. Besides, today cheap small keyboards tend to be either wireless or with a hardwired USB-A cable. Admittedly, a simple USB C/A adapter might do the trick too.
What about games? Asphalt 8 Airborne had worked with the Shrimp USB-C connected keyboard, so I could expect Logitech F350 to work too. And yes it did, but I had to do some other things before I could properly try the game.
Samsung Dex works in two modes, either as a dedicated desktop that uses the external display resolution and sets the touch screen as a trackpad, or as 100% mirrored phone screen, showing exactly what I'd see if I only used the mobile.
In the Dex desktop mode, if the game is launched and put into full screen, all kinds of weird screen resolution hiccups would appear. I didn't find a solid way to launch the game in the external display resolution, although it's obvious the game can do this. (Because it runs on different resolution Android phones and tabs).
Worse than that, the gamepad direction keys stopped responding until I refreshed the Dex trackpad screen.
Things were better with the full mirrored mode, as the game screen is set up nicely, if not altogether taking advantage of the external display resolution. There were no control anomalies, probably because the Dex trackpad is not invoked in any way.
It's silly to mirror the screen, and it uses battery power too. No doubt the better option would be to have the phone screen shut, but so far I didn't find a suitable configuration. For games it might be wiser to use the phone or tablet screen directly anyway.
If only I just could find an interesting gamepad-controlled mobile game. Don't get me wrong, the actual Asphalt game play was kind of nice but all that wading through menus and opportunities and "coins", in short the full-on mobile game experience, got to my nerves rather soon.
In any case it looks like car and flight games have lenient controls, negating any lag and inaccuracies, but as soon as I try some retro shooters the limits are more obvious.
Apart from that F350 gamepad, the Arduino 8-bit joystick adapter worked too, making this one of my most cross-linked blog posts ever. Not that it works well with any modern games, but I might explore some emulators later. My expectations are not high.
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