[njroute22]

Why do you need to mirror your phone? Why do you want to access your messages? For what purpose? What do you need to backup besides (maybe) photos? Which is easy (drag and drop) anyway. Sounds more like you have some kind of device dependency beyond normality.

[teawrecks]

I think when you say "why do you need to ____?" you think you're saying "what are you trying to do, and maybe there's another way to accomplish that", but what everyone hears is "you're right".

And for the record, "because it's their device, not Google's" should be as good a reason as any.

[njroute22]

Actually I'm just wondering specifically why the need to do any of those things. Isn't the phone just fine as a standalone thing? I mean other than maybe exporting photos, videos, or sound to a more powerful and easier to use platform (such as a desktop)...

[teawrecks]

This is like asking, "why do you need a touch screen or internet on a phone in the first place? Neither are needed to make phone calls. Isn't a phone just fine as a standalone thing?"

It's not 2005 anymore, a phone has all the computing power that most people need. In fact, most laptops are just phone boards these days. It's completely reasonable to ask that your hardware not be artificially limited by the software it's running so they can sell you a separate device that does the rest of what you need.

In a perfect world, my phone is a supercomputer capable of doing everything I'll ever want in a fraction of a second. And the thing standing between my current phone and a perfect phone shouldn't be my insistence on having a separate giant desktop taking up more space than is necessary.

[addaon]

I do the NYT crossword on my iPhone. Not uncommonly, someone will start kibitzing over my shoulder. If there's a TV nearby, I throw the app up there, either with AirPlay or an HDMI cable. Because it's an iPhone, the app can detect that it's mirrored to a big screen and give an alternate layout for that screen; the NYT crossword app does an average job of this, giving a layout optimized for large 16:9 landscape displays. Makes two people (or ten) working on a crossword together much more pleasant.

I'm not sure if this is a weird use case or not, but given the number of iPhone apps that I have both used and written that have special handling for TV mirroring to improve user experience... it can't be /that/ rare.

[privacyking]

Have you ever used miracast with iPhone?

[addaon]

I have not.

[hackmiester]

Displaying something on a TV is beyond normality?

[njroute22]

I think so - aren't there established avenues already? I just don't see why you'd need to do that from a phone... seems backwards

[mholt]

I sometimes have to give presentations at a community center or church or some random venue and I just need to plug in to their TV/projector. Got my slides all ready to go. Is that asking so much?