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Now that we’re in the age of the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus, there is one lingering thing that needs to be taken care of: the addition of Samsung’s phones in the list of devices that allow for ChromeOS’ Phone Hub App Streaming. I’ve advocated for this in the past, but now that we have a compelling Chromebook Plus from Samsung out in the wild, the time has truly come for a more-engaged experience when using a Galaxy phone with your Chromebook.
Phone Hub is a central marketing feature
In all the advertisements for the new Galaxy Chromebook Plus, you see the fact that Samsung Notes works across all your devices and that you can seamlessly move things from your phone to you Galaxy Chromebook Plus as well. We all know this is happening via Phone Hub and that it works with nearly all Android phones at this point; but I don’t blame Samsung for making it into a bit of an ecosystem play, either.
However, knowing there’s a step further you can go with Phone Hub and App Streaming on devices like Google’s own Pixel phones, I have to wonder why it is we still don’t have this ability with Samsung’s phones at this point. After all, phones from both Xiaomi and Nothing are in the App Streaming club: why not Samsung?
While I don’t use App Streaming very often, I’m sure many users take full advantage of it. With Samsung wanting to link the Galaxy Chromebook Plus as closely as possible to its own ecosystem of devices, I have to imagine they’d like their own phones to work with this feature.
And while this would all be useful on the new Galaxy Chromebook Plus, I ultimately think that getting App Streaming working on the best selling Android phones out there just makes good sense. I totally understood it only working on Pixel phones out of the gate, but I had no idea we’d be this far along and still not have Samsung compatibility worked out. I’m not sure if it’s on Samsung or on Google, but it’s something that needs to get fixed sooner rather than later. Here’s hoping the momentum of the Galaxy Chromebook Plus is enough to get it to the finish line.
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