I think you read this too literally. I want a device which acts like a phone in my pocket and acts like a desktop when plugged into a screen/mouse/keyboard. The perfect unison of essentials like ride-sharing with the ability to do serious work. It doesn't have to be /e/.
As others have suggested, Samsung DeX does this. I was forced to use it for a while when my laptop was broken. My older Galaxy S8 required buying a DeX Station to make it work, but that includes some USB ports that let me plug in external hard drives and even my Focusrite Scarlett audio interface for connecting my studio speakers. I used Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, but it also worked with USB.
For simple HTML editing I ended up using an app called Quoda, the closest I could find to Panic's Coda with an integrated editor and FTP:
DeX isn't something I've used long term, partly because I can't use it in a cafe (there's no laptop DeX form factor), and mostly because much of my work requires Windows software. But I was still very impressed at how much I could get done. For some people it would easily be all they need.
Yes, Dex can more or less do this. I didn't realize my Samsung phone could do it for six months after I bought it, so maybe it's not well advertised. It does work, but I haven't tried to get actual work done with it.
I have, but it doesn't work out or i haven't found adequate tools for my programmer's task. Most of the apps can't be full screen, fortunately there is dexmax app to fix this. Overall experience for some serious work is not good, but for surfing it's fine. I succesfully used rdp to connect to my desktop computer :)
Android 10 can apparently be coaxed into something like a desktop experience if you have the right phone. It's at least possible Android 11 will have a proper desktop mode built in, but I suppose I'm not holding my breath.
