I think there’s only one thing that I envy about Apple products, and that’s the ecosystem that they’ve been able to build around their products. It is the reason people get sucked in and find it hard to escape, and while there are similar options in the Android world, it is limited to devices from the same manufacturer, such as Samsung.
The addition of cross-device services on Android is the second step to building a more inclusive Android ecosystem (I’m considering your Google account to be the first one) and it has just started rolling out to Android devices with the first set of features.
Call Casting Lets You Transfer Phone Calls To Your Other Android Devices
One of the cross-device services that your Android phone now supports is a feature called “Call Casting”, which is fortunately pretty easy to understand at first glance.
Let’s say you take a call on your Android tablet which you solely use at home but you’re about to step out of the house to go to work or run some errands. Sure, you can hang up and start the call again on your phone so you can leave the house, but that’s a little clunky.
Call casting will make it possible to move a call straight to another device, rather seamlessly. At the moment, only Google Meet supports this, but I’m going to bet that other applications will hop on the train with time.
Instant Hotspot Lets You Share Internet Between Devices… In An Instant
Sometimes your Android smartphone’s cellular data might be the only way you access the internet. Wi-Fi isn’t available all the time, after all. In cases like this, if you want to get to work on your Chromebook, you’d need to turn on your phone’s hotspot, check the password, and sign in on your Chromebook. That’s some time you could have spent being productive.
With Instant Hotspot, you’ll be able to “automatically share hotspot access with your own devices”, which includes Chromebooks and not just Android devices. As long as they’re on the same Google account, you’ll be able to get connected to the internet in a mere instant on your other devices.
Samsung devices will not be able to use the Instant Hotspot feature.
The Prerequisites For Using Cross-Device Services
For now, Call Casting and Internet Sharing are the only major cross-device services available (some apps may make it easier to share between devices too), but the portfolio is bound to get larger with time. I only have one Android device, but I’m still excited about this development.
Keep in mind there are certain boxes to tick before you can take advantage of cross-device services. You’ll need at least two devices, both on at least Android 11. They have to be signed into the same Google account and have Bluetooth enabled. To enable this, open Settings, then Google, Devices & Sharing, and toggle “Use cross-device services”.
After this, the device will be added to a “Device Group” by default. Devices in the same group can use cross-device services together with one another. You can choose to remove a device from a group if you want though.
There is one exception to the prerequisites earlier mentioned though. Android Go devices aren’t supported.
