According to the report, the upcoming Android ‘Phone Hub’ of Chrome OS may get the function of mirroring the phone screen, and as an exclusive function of Google Pixel phones. Based on the tracking of Phone Hub over the past few months, we believe it is the latest way for Chrome OS and Android to ‘better fit together’.
In a nutshell, Phone Hub is a set of features that connect your phone to a Chromebook, like notification mirroring, syncing your recent Chrome tab and some quick settings.
The code name ‘Eche’ has started to appear in the Chromium source code. ‘SWA’ here is the abbreviation of ‘System Web App’. Simply put, it refers to a built-in Chrome OS application created by using network technology, a bit like Progressive Web App. Along with this, ‘Eche’ is likely to be Spanish ‘eche’ that can be translated as ‘throw’ or ‘to cast’.
After a lot of digging, explain what Eche SWA should do. In fact, Eche is an application related to video sources that are sent back and forth between two devices via WebRTC – the same technology used by many real-time video applications including Google Duo – and some other ‘data’.
With the two recently released Chromium code modifications, these parts are already in place. The first change changes the way the Android notification mirroring of Phone Hub works, by marking internally whether the received notification can be “opened” to the application.
If it can be opened, then the ‘Eche’ project should be notified when clicked.’ In the second change, it is found that clicking the Phone Hub notification will open an Eche window directly related to the notification.
On the whole, we have a Chrome OS feature. When you click on a notification mirrored from an Android phone, a special application will be opened. Then the app will probably stream the video from somewhere and display it in the window.
Therefore, we believe that the ‘Eche’ project is an application that mirrors the phone screen to Chrome OS, allowing you to see and use the phone directly from the Chromebook.
When you click the notification of Phone Hub, Chrome OS will tell your phone to click the notification, and then, through the streaming video, open the application in the form of a window on the Chromebook.
Simply put, Eche seems to be a way to mirror the screen of an Android phone to a Chromebook. Microsoft’s Windows 10 Your Phone app already provides this connection for selected Samsung phones and Surface Duo.
Interestingly, the Eche screen mirroring of Chrome OS seems to start as an exclusive feature of Pixel phones. The reason why we cannot be more sure about the role of Eche is that the Javascript of the application is not included in the Chromium source code.
Instead, according to another code change, it is located in the Google source code folder and seems to be specifically for Pixel phones.
This is far from conclusive, but for Google, it is very meaningful to provide a better version of the Chrome OS Android Phone Hub for Pixel phones. Previously, Instant Tethering was exclusive to Pixelbook and Pixel phones.
Hope that Google will provide this screen mirroring function on more Android phones, making it a priority for Pixel, rather than a unique feature of Pixel.
However, Chrome OS has been able to install and run Android applications natively . However, there are many scenarios where you may prefer to use specific applications in your phone instead.
For example, WhatsApp can only log in on one device at a time. If you use screen mirroring, it will allow you to send messages from your Chromebook while logging in on your Pixel phone.
(Via)
