Microsoft may have missed the boat on mobile operating systems, but they’re making up for it in spades with innovative apps for both Android and iOS and today they’ve announced a new feature which will mirror any app on your phone on your Windows 10 desktop.
The new feature, which is part of the October Windows update, will see a new app called ‘Your Phone’ made available through the Microsoft Store, allowing you to both see and access apps running on your Android 7.0+ phone on your Windows 10 PC.
In their demo video, they show a user accessing the last 25 shots in the camera roll, as well as accessing text messages from the phone – however the intent is to be able to access any app on your phone. You can drag and drop photos, or copy and paste text from the SMS app, allowing you a fairly broad range of functionality from your Windows 10 desktop.
It’s not quite an Android compatability layer as we see in Chrome OS which lets you run apps natively, however this may be just the bridge to your phone that a number of people need.
The new feature will arrive in the October Windows update, which is beginning to roll out from today.
Despite some hype about this across media, the functionality of Your Phone isn’t that great. There was no app mirroring beyond SMS and photos. It’s clunky and is bested by browser-based extensions like Join and online apps like Google Photos.
Android only, not iOS?
Possibly, but initially iOS users will be able to send links to their PC, that’s about it.