One of my frustrations with mobile phones for a long time has been the lack of integration with my computer. I still think that cell phone carriers are missing a treat not providing calls and texts via WiFi when a signal isn’t available, but that is another story.
The main thing that has frustrated me in a work setting for a long time has been the fact that I can’t run my phone directly on my computer. It’s so frustrating having to huddle over your teeny mobile phone, switching between devices when you have a computer in front of you that is powerful enough to control everything.
I think though, at least some of my frustration might be over.
Today I cam across the most incredible app. LazyDroid.
LazyDroid essential allows you to control various parts of your Android phone directly from your computer’s browser. All you need is to be on the same WiFi network!
It’s so simple to set up, too! You simply download the LazyDroid app from the Android marketplace, fire it up, and it gives you an IP address right away. Simply type that into your browsers address bar and you have access to some of your phones features directly from your browser. Neat huh?
Once you have logged in via your browser, you will see the browser layout (as the first image in this blog post demonstrates).
It’s there that the fun begins. You can now leave your phone on your desk and use many of your Android’s features without having to even touch it. I love this.
Features from within the browser include:
- SMS app. Send and receive texts from right within your browser.
- FileManager app. Fully explore, preview, move, upload and download your files.
- Contacts app. Explore, edit, add and remove contacts, even initiate phone calls from within your browser using a Bluetooth headset or your phone on speakerphone.
- Camera app. Fully control your phones camera from within your browser. To me this would be a great way to spy on people – muhaha!
- Clipboard app. View what is currently on your phones clipboard, copy it to your computer, or indeed place something on your phone’s clipboard.
- Sensors app. View information from your phone’s internal sensors (GPS, Accelerometer, Compass, Light Sensor, etc).
- Remote View app. This app requires your Android to be rooted, but that is easy enough to do. You will then be able to view what is on your phone’s screen through your browser.
- Call answering. If your phone rings then it will ring on your browser screen too. You can answer directly on your computer screen and the call will either connect via speakerphone or if you have a Bluetooth headset connected, directly into your headset. Nice!
So, yeh. This is some pretty sweet stuff. I hope that this company gets some investment and develop this further. I think that this technology has a lot of potential. The developers are already talking about bringing this to iPhone and iPad on their website.
What are your thoughts on this? Would it be useful to you?
April says
I am trying to use this because it would be of extreme use to me since I am at my desk at work all day, but am having an issue getting on and there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of directions on how to use it.
Graham says
I’ll check this out simply so I can text from my computer!
Mark Curtis says
Very cool stuff! When I set it up though they wanted a $3 donation to access the advanced features. The only thing I could access in “free” mode was my texts. Definitely worth the $3 though. Thanks for turning us onto this!