Microsoft’s Your Phone Smartphone Mirroring App Reaches Release Preview

Your Phone allows users to mirror their Android smartphone onto a Windows 10 PC. The app is available now as a limited preview.

Microsoft’s new Your Phone feature has been doing the rounds through preview branches over the last month. The feature arrived on Android earlier this month and was later put in preview for Windows Insiders. Since then it has passed through the Fast Ring. Microsoft now says Your Phone is available on Release Preview.

Last week, Microsoft seemed to have released the app to all Windows 10 users. I speculated this was strange as Your Phone is surely an October 2018 Update (Redstone 5) feature. It turns out I was right and someone in Redmond had accidentally released the app early… it was quickly pulled.

Your Phone is among the most interesting Windows 10 features Microsoft has debuted this year. It is an app that lets users mirror their Android smartphone screen directly to their PC. Essentially, users can see their smartphone on their Windows 10 PC.

However, in preview Your Phone has been introduced with a limited set of features. Microsoft says the app can only drag and drop photos into Office and Windows 10 apps at the moment.

In the future, the feature set will be widely expanded, and Your Phone will become a useful tool. For example, Microsoft says it will allow users to sync more smartphone functions such as notifications and messages.

The hope is third-party developers will also get on board, allowing apps to be mirrored on PC. So, at the moment the app is still under development so if you download it remember this is really just to see how the basic idea works.

No iOS Support

As mentioned, the service is already available on Android, but Apple’s iOS is not supported. This is a rare situation where Microsoft’s embraces Google’s platform and not Apple’s. Indeed, iOS is usually first inline for apps and updates.

Microsoft explains the reason Your Phone is not coming to iOS is because of the closed ecosystem Apple employs. The company says if the app is ever made available on the platform it would be in a limited capacity.

SourceBetaNews
Luke Jones
Luke Jones
Luke has been writing about Microsoft and the wider tech industry for over 10 years. With a degree in creative and professional writing, Luke looks for the interesting spin when covering AI, Windows, Xbox, and more.

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