welcome to tekzilla bites,feeding your tech hunger fast. i'm michael hand. so one of my favoriteannouncements from google i/o a few weeks ago was the mentionof android screen mirroring for chromecast.
Android TV lock screen, this is a featurethat many argue should have come with thelaunch of the chromecast. but in any case, it's here now. google announced ontheir chrome blog
that the 1.7 updatefor the chromecast app enables the mirroring. once you've got theupdated version, it couldn't be easier to set up. make sure you're onthe same wi-fi network as your chromecast and choosecast screen from the app. choose your chromecast, andboom, that's your screen. this is very similar to theway airplay mirroring works on the iphone and apple tv.
but 100% of what yousee on your screen is what you get on thetv, menu bars included. turn your phone sideways, andyou'll flip to full screen. and you can control the volumewith your normal volume rocker buttons. every application that i triedout on my phone worked fine. want to see your snapchatson the big screen? done. and the camera works as well.
and i loved how easyit was to throw up a picture from mygallery to the tv. and you can also display videos. and yes, the audio sent as well. in my test, av syncwas pretty spot on, but i did experience theoccasional stuttering. there's somedefinite lag as well, maybe a quarter of a second. so you're not to beplaying any games that
require fast responses. but by far, my favoriteuse i found during testing was sending audio to the tv. something seems a littlestrange about that, but i could listen tomy favorite podcasts without needing achromecast-compatible app. and the audio keeps sendingeven when the screen is off. very cool. which reminds me.
our sponsor audible has appsfor all sorts of devices. you can get a free audiobookof your choice by signing up at audiblepodcast.com/tekzilla. all right. so that was all the good. but what about the bad? so as expected, therewas a battery drop, but not as huge as iwould have thought. it was more from my screenbeing on during the mirroring
than the mirroring itself. and there weresome bugs for sure. the biggest onethat i ran into was that when i was sending video,it would stutter, and then stop, and then thechromecast would disconnect. but my phone stillthought i was connected, so it would have to do a fullreboot to get it to work again. and i also ran intowhere mirroring was still working fine, but thenmy internet connection
would just drop out. so using apps became alittle more difficult. but hey, i'm using a nexus4, so your results may vary. and chromecast mirroringis literally a day old and beta, so i'llgive it a little slack. keep in mind thatchromecast mirroring isn't enabled for everyphone at this point. but it's supposed to berolling out to more phones. so check the list, see ifyour device is supported.
and hey, want to draw onyour friend's lock screens?
check out the video thatshannon did on lock lock. but this is forprofessional uses only. no drawing of genitalia allowed. see you later.
