Microsoft is Preparing To Test Android App-Mirroring on Windows 10 (zdnet.com)

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Microsoft is Preparing To Test Android App-Mirroring on Windows 10 (zdnet.com)

Posted by msmash on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @03:28AM from the how-about-that dept.

Microsoft showed off the ability to mirror applications running on an Android phone to a Windows 10 PC last fall. Windows Insiders could begin testing this feature as soon as this week. From a report: MSPoweruser reports that the Android app-mirroring feature initially will be available on certain Android phones running Android 7.0 or greater, specifically the Samsung Galaxy S8, S8+, S9 and S9+. Supported Windows 10 PCs need to have the "Bluetooth radio supports Low Energy Peripheral Role" on their systems in order to get the app-mirroring feature to work. Users will need to have Microsoft's Your Phone app installed for the feature to work. Only Windows Insiders running the latest test builds on certain devices will be able to test app-mirroring at first.The app-mirroring feature potentially could be available to Insiders as soon as this week.

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Ummm.... Miracast by Excelcia · 2019-03-12 03:33 · Score: 1

Miracast has been mirroring Android apps since 2012. To Windows or almost any TV. How is this remotely new or innovative?
1. Re:Ummm.... Miracast by drinkypoo · 2019-03-12 03:40 · Score: 2
  
  Miracast has been mirroring Android apps since 2012. To Windows or almost any TV. How is this remotely new or innovative?
  Miracast was added as standard in Android 4.2, and then removed again in Android 6. Only some phones support it now.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
2. Re:Ummm.... Miracast by blahbooboo · 2019-03-12 04:30 · Score: 1
  
  Miracast has been mirroring Android apps since 2012. To Windows or almost any TV. How is this remotely new or innovative?
  Miracast was added as standard in Android 4.2, and then removed again in Android 6. Only some phones support it now.
  Well nice thing about android, most folks wont ever seen those upgrades so i bet vast majority are still Miracasting away :P
3. Re:Ummm.... Miracast by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-12 04:43 · Score: 0
  
  >Well nice thing about android, most folks wont ever seen those upgrades so i bet vast majority are still Miracasting away :P
  Only cheap "folks". If you buy a decent phone it gets updated. If you buy junk, it does not. As with anything, you get what you paid for.
4. Re:Ummm.... Miracast by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-12 04:44 · Score: 0
  
  ... i would expect the ability of the OS to search the memory contents of the running apps for datamining(ie... surveillance).
5. Re:Ummm.... Miracast by PolygamousRanchKid+ · 2019-03-12 04:47 · Score: 1
  
  How is this remotely new or innovative?
  It provides access to all the data on your phone to Windows Telemetry . . . and their pals . . .
  So, what this really means:
  
  Users will need to have Microsoft's Your Phone app installed for the feature to work.
  . . . is that your phone now is transformed into Microsoft's Their Phone.
  
  --
  Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
6. Re:Ummm.... Miracast by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-12 05:17 · Score: 0
  
  >Well nice thing about android, most folks wont ever seen those upgrades so i bet vast majority are still Miracasting away :P
  Only cheap "folks". If you buy a decent phone it gets updated. If you buy junk, it does not. As with anything, you get what you paid for.
  "You get what you pay for" yeah, a bunch of useless bling and a much larger attack surface ...
7. Re:Ummm.... Miracast by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-12 05:49 · Score: 0
  
  What are you on?! Even flagship phones only get updates for ~2 years
8. Re:Ummm.... Miracast by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-12 07:14 · Score: 0
  
  Miracast is non-interactive. This one lets you control your phone, including using your mouse/keyboard.
9. Re:Ummm.... Miracast by thegarbz · 2019-03-12 07:51 · Score: 1
  
  How is this remotely new or innovative?
  I know right. Nothing is new or innovative if I don't bother even remotely looking up what makes it different. What are those people even thinking making something that I think works exactly like Miracast!
10. Re:Ummm.... Miracast by thegarbz · 2019-03-12 07:52 · Score: 2
  
  Yeah because when they own your desktop computer your biggest concern is that they may also own your toy phone.
11. Re:Ummm.... Miracast by Solandri · 2019-03-12 09:03 · Score: 2
  
  Technically it's still there, just disabled by a switch in the Android settings. Unfortunately you have to root your device to turn that setting back on (in build.prop, change persist.debug.wfd.enable=0 to 1).
  
  Miracast is an open standard, so there's no licensing cost associated with it. As best as I can tell, Google disabled it for performance reasons. Like Steam In Home Streaming, Miracast works by encoding everything showing on the device's screen in real-time into a h.264 stream, then streaming that to another device. To the other device, it's like it's playing a streamed movie. Unfortunately this requires quite of bit of power on the Android device doing the encoding (even though the encoding is done in hardware on the GPU), causing battery life to plummet to a few hours. This led to unfavorable comparisons with iOS devices, which don't really mirror the screen, they just redirect things like the incoming video stream from the phone to your TV. So it seems Google disabled it so the ignorant masses would stop comparing screen mirroring with stream redirection, and incorrectly claiming iOS was better at it.
  
  Which makes me wonder how exactly Microsoft is going to pull off app mirroring. If they're going to write their own Android app which implements Miracast or their own proprietary version of it (like Remote Desktop), that may actually be a good thing. Apps on other devices can then be written to be compatible with the Microsoft app (like Windows SMB file sharing has become standard via SAMBA making compatible clients available on all other computer platforms). And people without rooted devices will have a way to mirror their screen to their TV again.
12. Re:Ummm.... Miracast by thegarbz · 2019-03-13 08:00 · Score: 1
  
  It works from device to device without affecting something as fundamental as networking.
  It works without draining your Android device flat within an hour as typically happens with WiFi direct connections.
Nobody by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-12 03:36 · Score: 0

"Will ever need more than 640K RAM"
-- Voltaire
Dell Mobile Connect had this for a while by JoeyRox · 2019-03-12 03:36 · Score: 1

And Dell's solution supports the iPhone too, although it requires keeping their iOS running in the foreground with the screen on.

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-mobile-connect/ab/dell-mobile-connect
AirPlay? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-12 04:10 · Score: 0

Isn't this just a very limited form of iOS/macOS/TVOS' "AirPlay" for Android?
Serious question.
1. Re:AirPlay? by jellomizer · 2019-03-12 05:22 · Score: 1
  
  It sounds like it to me.
  The big thing, is Windows 10 is more widely used then MacOS and the Apple TV. So now one can have their Presentation on their phone, and project it on a Windows PC for work, without all that mucking about with copying the file onto a shared drive, or sharing a USB stick.
  You can do this with AirPlay but the problem is trying to find an Apple product hooked up at work.
  
  --
  If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Airdroid, Miracast by Virtucon · 2019-03-12 04:16 · Score: 1

been there, done that. Yawn.

--
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
1. Re:Airdroid, Miracast by thegarbz · 2019-03-13 07:58 · Score: 1
  
  Been there, fail, not capable of this, unable to use it across different networks, drops you off wifi to achieve what it does, finally MS presents something that may work as a solution.
  The only real yawn is: Slashdot ignorance claims something is already being done without having a clue how a system works, *yawn*.
Too bad they gave up on their phones by DogDude · 2019-03-12 04:28 · Score: 1

It's a shame they gave up on their phones. I like 'em a lot better than the Android ones. The Windows Phone UI is much better than Android or Apple. Luckily, the phones obviously still work fine, and there are a whole lot available for cheap.

--
I don't respond to AC's.
1. Re:Too bad they gave up on their phones by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-12 05:54 · Score: 0
  
  You're trolling. No one imagined that Windows Phone was any good, which is why it's gone.
2. Re:Too bad they gave up on their phones by drinkypoo · 2019-03-12 08:27 · Score: 1
  
  You're trolling. No one imagined that Windows Phone was any good, which is why it's gone.
  It's totally possible that they were all trolls, but people with actual accounts repeatedly have made claims like this here. My understanding was that the reason Windows Phone died is that nobody was making apps for it. If Microsoft had flushed wince a long time earlier, maybe they could have made a go of it, but they didn't.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
3. Re:Too bad they gave up on their phones by KlomDark · 2019-03-13 05:22 · Score: 1
  
  Bullshit. I'm a few months into switching from a Nokia 950 Windows Phone to a Galaxy S9+ and I still wish for things WP had.
  - The ability to choose a snooze delay time when the alarm goes off. (!!!!)
  - The ability to record 4K video with STEREO AUDIO. Fucking S9+ does 4K video, but only mono audio. WTF?
  - Replacable battery
  - Continuum smokes DEX as far as working full screen. (Weirdly, my Windows Phone Continuum device will work with that Galaxy, never expected that.)
  - So many little things I grew to love about WP that don't exist in android.
  Yes, earlier Windows Phones/earlier Windows Mobile were kind of shitty. But they finally nailed it with Windows Mobile 10 and the Nokia 950 line, just to give up on it. Satya sucks, he's only concerned about building the Azure cloud while cannibalizing the rest of the company.
Range? by magarity · 2019-03-12 05:21 · Score: 1

PCs need to have the "Bluetooth radio supports Low Energy Peripheral Role"
OK so this is a nice technical exercise but really if I'm within BT range of a PC there's no way I want to poke at an Android phone screen instead of using the PC's keyboard and mouse.
nice words used by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-12 05:46 · Score: 0

nice work
MICROSOFT IS DEAD by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-12 06:01 · Score: 0

Microsoft is dead. Face it.
Perfect for Win10 by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2019-03-12 06:57 · Score: 2

This will feel very natural in Win10.
You see, Win10 is huge step for Windows. For ages they were trying to cram a full desktop UI into the tiny 4 inch screens, without keyboard. Then, they turned around and slapped a UI designed for 4 inch screens on the 24 inch desktop.
With App mirroring the full power of stretching a 5 inch UI over 24 inch display will be totally apparent.
Right now Microsoft is busy implementing a gesture UI for their minitowers.
After that they will think of doing something about the swipe control using a three button mouse.

--
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
1. Re:Perfect for Win10 by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-12 07:33 · Score: 0
  
  Perhaps they will now also force all Windows 10 monitors to be vertical, or at least have black borders to on sides to get the one true phone experience. Otherwise the stupid user gets confused from non-phone-like display orientation. A hardware keyboard needs to get disabled also, who would use a keyboard anymore instead of touchscreen keypad with all the useful emoticons?
Finally, can play games while working! by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-12 19:49 · Score: 0

Now I can camp my Ingress portal/PokemonGo Pokestop all day...
So they can spy on that to. Um, no. by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-13 00:47 · Score: 0

Nope, No Win 10 for our 14K user company, Can't trust Microsoft.