With today’s Chrome OS, you can easily connect your Android phone to your Chromebook for things like text / RCS messaging, automatic Wi-Fi hotspot and Smart Lock, all part of Google’s “Better Together” initiative. Now Chrome OS is getting ready to expand with a new Android “Phone Hub” that promises notifications and “task continuation”.
Compared to Better Together on Chrome OS, the Your Phone app for Windows 10 requires you to install an app on your phone, send and receive text messages, manage your photos, and use your phone’s media controls . On some Samsung devices, the Your Phone app can even manage copy / paste of cross devices and view your device’s screen.
While some would argue that Windows 10 is a more “full-fledged” operating system than Chrome OS, it’s still interesting to see Microsoft integrate more deeply with Android phones than Google’s own laptop / desktop platform.
Fortunately, Google seems to be building deeper integration between Android and Chrome OS, according to a new code change we discovered last week. In the change, we find a new flag to be added to chrome: // flags that refers to a new feature called “Phone Hub.”
Enable phone hub
Provides a UI for users to view information about their Android phone and perform actions on the phone side in Chrome OS.
# enable-phone-hub
It’s pretty clear from this description that Phone Hub should have more features than Chrome OS offers today, because the only information and “actions on the phone side” currently available are message viewing and responding.
In another code change, we find that Phone Hub can be found in a new section of the same page Connected Devices, just below instant tethering, smart lock, and messaging. In this section, Google adds three new settings.
Phone Hub Notifications
Phone hub notifications badge
Phone hub Task Continuation
The first two are somewhat self-explanatory, allowing you to view and manage the notifications from your Android phone on your Chromebook, though we’m not yet sure where the “notification badge” will appear.
On the other hand, “Task Continuation” is an incredibly exciting prospect, which somehow plays on Google’s drive for “ambient computing.” Essentially, computer environment is the idea of getting things done on any device you want, instead of using one device over another.
While details are thin at the moment, we believe that continuing to include Task Hub strongly implies recording on your Chromebook wherever you are on your Android phone. What we do not know yet is if this Task Continuation might be limited to smoothly moving tabs between devices or if Chrome OS’s Android apps support can help you restart an app’s activities.
Because Phone Hub is still in the very early stages of development, the only other detail we have discovered is that your Android and Chrome OS devices will connect via Bluetooth. For now, of course, that leaves a lot of questions unanswered, such as when we should expect Chrome OS’s Phone Hub to be released and if an app is required. We will continue to keep an eye on Phone Hub as it progresses and things become clearer.
Update 8/15: Google’s Chrome OS Team continues to make progress on these new Phone Hub features coming to Chromebooks. The latest code change includes a link to a video showing some of the Phone Hub UI in action .
In the video, we see a new “Notifications” button that opens a prompt telling you to “Enable notifications under Google Play Services> Chromebook Phone Hub of your phone.” This tells us that, unlike your Microsoft phone, which requires you to install an app, the Chrome OS Phone Hub will be built into Google Play Services.
If development still seems to be too early, it is likely that the exact phrasing can be adjusted as Phone Hub gets closer to launch. And of course, our APK Insight team will be keeping an eye on Google Play Services for all the signs of Phone Hub arriving on the Android side of things.
What would you like to be able to do on your phone from your Chromebook? Let us know in the comments.
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