The newly activated desktop mode is an enhancement over the previous, barely usable "proof of concept" version. Still, it's clearly far away from being ready for primetime.
I tested it for about 20 minutes:
- Vanadium finally displays more like an actual desktop browser, with a nice tab bar. I'm assuming this is how it looks on the Tablet.
- Entering text into certain search fields in Vanadium just skips focus back to other elements on the page. Vanadium's built-in page search behaves the same.
- Alt-tabbing just switches between apps on the phone screen. If I alt-tab in very quick succession I can get back to the desktop mode's home screen, so I can switch between apps from there.
- Resizing windows is a buggy experience. For instance, if I manage to maximize an app so that the window/title bar disappears, I can't get it back. The setting appears to persist per-app, so the app's windows can no longer be resized.
- Easier to get the cursor to display on the monitor
I'm assuming all these are upstream behaviours.
I'll probably never use this until it's more mature, or use it rarely, partly because I don't like having Developer options enabled (although I think it ought still to be gated behind it), and partly because I don't see much benefit from it in its current state. It's good for displaying apps in fullscreen though. Could use it to watch movies, display pictures, etc. Also seems like Vanadium works fine to some degree.