Has Librem considered offering their own version of a NexDock? (hopefully with a bigger screen, like 15.6")
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Count me as interested as well - the only thing I dislike about nexdoc is the need for external cable connection: feels finicky. If Purism makes one specifically for Librem 5, they can choose exact dimensions to embed the phone directly in place of touchpad.
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Which connection are you talking about? What is connected to what?
Do you mean that you want to replace the USB-C cable connection between the Librem 5 and the NexDock … with a USB-C dock connector (male) directly coming out of the NexDock (potentially internal)?
Sounds doable (for a dock that is purpose-built for the Librem 5).
I don’t know that you want to use the phone as the touchpad because the NexDock screen is a touch screen anyway. So maybe only mouse click (and scroll?) functions are needed. Some users are complaining about resting their palms when using the keyboard and accidentally activating the touchpad (or in your scenario activating the Librem 5), however that should be solvable.
Still, that too sounds doable.
Yepp - having Librem 5 fixed inside the doc feels way more convenient and safe than fiddling around with cable tether between 2 different devices.
Personally I dislike to use laptop screen for touch input - gets smudgy and gross real quick regardless of how often you wash your hands. I’d rather touch one place and look at the other unless smaller form-factor (e. g. smartphone) leaves me no other choice.
Some complicating factors are:
- yes, pointing precision will be better on a (hypothetical) 15.6" NexDock screen as compared with a 5.7" Librem 5 screen
- if you have an adaptive app that displays and behaves differently on the big screen as compared with the little screen then it may be tricky to use the little screen for pointing (still OK to use it to move the cursor though - and you probably want to turn the little screen off, while still generating touch events - is this possible?)
- it would be trickier still if you chose to use the two screens as separate screens i.e. of the three modes (independent, appended vertically or horizontally, mirrored) perhaps only mirrored makes sense for what you are suggesting, or the little screen is just off.
Still, at the end of the day, these are all technical issues - and those would be trumped by other issues e.g. is there a market demand? is it financially viable? does the engineering bandwidth exist to make this product? (taking into account other products that could be explored)
I was thinking of smth much simpler: when inside the doc, phone screen is 100% occupied with “touchpad-doc” app which emulates synaptics touchpad (or whatever) for libinput. That way we can re-use already existing infrastructure for scaling, calibration etc and don’t have to bother with presenting dual screen towards apps.
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It may be better not to stick to the exact size of the Librem 5 Evergreen, as even different batches of this phone have different sizes. In addition, the potential use of this device with other phones may increase the market for it.
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