Google adds smoother media transitions from device to device
Start listening in your car, switch to your headset, and cast the remaining to your Google Home devices. That’s the goal and Google has done an OK job of letting you do the switching with the latest update. This was announced about five days ago but this is the first chance I’ve had to play with it.
It’s not as smooth as advertised unfortunately, not yet at least. I managed to start listening to the news, get a random song playing when I connected to the car bluetooth, had to switch back to the news, then realized when I got into the house I had no cast devices because my phone connected to the wrong network for some reason. Eh, it happens. Connected to the right network, attempted to continue my news, and got very very choppy audio going forward.
Good start, great idea, implementation is going to require some work.
Warnings that a speaker will get access to my screen, choppy audio, it’s cool and all but not particularly usable today. My bet is within a week it will be but I feel like they may have rushed this for CES last week.
Pretty easy set up – start a playlist, podcast, or music. Swipe down, tap the “this phone” button and choose where you want it to go. You’ll need to be connected to the same network if you want it to go to cast devices. I’m a bit confused why “Printing” and NFC are shown for connection, but I guess it’s bombing out to the default connections page and not a media player specific one.
Overall cool. You can read about what it’s designed to do at the Google Blog link below.
[Google Blog]
