Curious question about mobile themes…

I am using a theme for my desktop version of the website and that’s working out well. Nice admin section for customization and all.

Instead of using a mobile plugin for my site to make it mobile friendly, I’ve decided to use a mobile detector plugin called WP-Mobile-Detector.

I don’t have a question related to the plugin (but it is nice that I can install themes, then activate them from within settings of that plugin and it doesn’t interfere w/my main theme I use for desktop version of the site).

However, I am curious about editing mobile themes. It appears that the in the admin section of WP, the only way to edit a theme is to activate it (so you can gain access to the admin section of that theme) or you can manually change PHP and CSS files (which I don’t want to do). Of course, if I activate the theme I’m going to use for mobile, that will change my desktop version as well, and I can edit my mobile theme, edit it, deactive it, re-active my normal desktop theme – then reactive the mobile them through my mobile detector plugin.

Is this normal? to flip back and forth when using two themes (one for desktop and one for mobile)? Has anyone else done this? or have a better way to edit the mobile theme without deactivating the main theme that powers the desktop version of the site?

Just curious about what others have done or gone through…