Photo by Jan Gottweiss on Unsplash

Samsung wants its phones to play a bigger part in police work, and has launched a new system designed to make them a key component of police car IT.

Called Samsung DeX in Car, the system is essentially designed to turn a Samsung Galaxy smartphone into a police car computer. Officers can plug in a Galaxy S8, S9, or Note 8 device, and then use the integrated display and keyboard to operate the DeX like a normal computer system.

In a statement announcing the solution, Samsung emphasized its utility in the context of the growing prominence of mobile tech in policing. “The phone is becoming the critical technology tool for public safety officials,” explained Samsung Public Sector Sales and Solutions Director Reginald Jones, “and Samsung DeX enables officers to use their Galaxy smartphone as a laptop replacement in the vehicle and in the station.”

The company also emphasized the system’s security use of Samsung Knox, the security architecture underlying Samsung’s latest mobile devices that helps to ensure data is safely encrypted. Samsung’s latest smartphones also feature biometric authentication, supporting fingerprint, facial, and iris recognition to ensure that unauthorized users can’t gain access to a given phone.

The police car is a novel area for the application of Samsung’s technology, and it’s certainly not one that its chief rival, Apple, is keen to get into. Whether officers embrace the DeX solution will probably depend on whether they’re regular Android users themselves.