It was first reported several months ago that Samsung will launch a new accessory called the DeX Pad alongside the Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9+. It's the successor to last year's DeX Station which aimed to provide a PC-like functionality with the Galaxy S8.
Sure enough, Samsung unveiled the DeX Pad today alongside the Galaxy S9, and while at first glance it might seem that only the design is different, there's actually more here than meets the eye.
New DeX Pad
The DeX Station worked surprisingly well in powering a PC-like experience with the Galaxy S8. It had a sliding mechanism that enabled the device to fit in but Samsung has done away with that in favor of a flat design. The Galaxy S9 rests on top of the DeX Pad and while that might seem like a step backward in design, there's actually a reason behind this change.
You couldn't really get proper use out of the DeX Station unless you had a wireless keyboard and mouse. Even if you had access to an external monitor, you needed the peripherals to actually get any work done. That's not the case with the DeX Pad because it brings the phone's display as close as possible to the surface thus allowing you to use it as a trackpad and even a keyboard.
The predecessor couldn't drive higher resolution displays because the max resolution for a connected screen was capped at 1080p. That's no longer the case with the DeX Pad which can drive external displays with a resolution of up to 2560×1440. Gaming with the Galaxy S9 on DeX just got a whole lot better.
Connectivity options are more or less the same with the two full USB ports and a USB Type-C port being retained alongside an HDMI out. However, the ethernet port that was present in the DeX Station has been removed from the DeX Pad.
Samsung is yet to confirm how much the DeX Pad is going to cost but given that its predecessor cost around $100, we can expect it to cost about the same.
