Introduction
I've got Samsung Galaxy S2 (SGS2) as my phone, yes it's old, but at the moment I can't justify signing up for a contract to get something new when my money could be better spent. I think that my SGS2 is a brilliantly capable phone, certainly does everything I need it to do, the only criticisms I can make of it is performance (it does struggle with new, more demanding apps and when there is a few running. I've noticed that apps being updated really hurts performance to the point that the phone locks up for a second or two); and the screen size.
Ironically, I can't do anything about the performance but I can sort out my screen size issue. For me, I've got big-finger-itis. Also known as a fat thumb. So whilst icons are a usable size and I don't have an issue, using the screen for detailed work like filling in text boxes is a struggle. Also looking at a little screen compared to a 21 inch monitor is a pain.
This article talks about how I'm experimenting with how I can make my SGS2 a bit more usable.
Viewing
There's two aspects I'm looking at, firstly using the screen in terms of seeing it easily, and secondly interfacing with the phone. I'll be looking at the visualisation issue now.
A consortium of members consisting of Samsung, Nokia and others have worked in collaboration to produce a standard known as MHL. MHL is an interface that allows you to export what you see on your screen out as a HDMI signal. You can then use a HDMI cable to display this on your monitor or TV.
The first step is to get the HDMI signal from the phone. This is done using the HDTV Adapter.
I looked on eBay and Amazon for these and found hundreds in the £5-10 band. When I read the reviews it was extremely mixed. Not just one or two bad ones but every third one had a grumble.
So I looked for the official Samsung one, when I discovered an RRP of £34.99 I started to change my mind, but I was very lucky and found an official Samsung adapter on eBay for £5.99 - so I snatched that up and I already had a HDMI cable and the monitor I wanted to use available.
 |
| Samsung HDTV Adapter |
The official Samsung HDTV Adapter arrives in a nice compact package. There is only the one component to this, nothing complicated to get it working.
 |
| Samsung individual packaging. |
The SGS2 uses MHL v1.0 which means that the HDTV adapter requires a power supply. The really frustrating issue is that the current supplied by a normal USB 2 port isn't enough. You will need a mains plug.
The micro USB lead plugs straight into your phone, power the plugs in to a micro USB port adjacent to the flying lead. Then you connect your HDMI cable into the other end of the adapter and your TV.
You don't need to install any apps or perform and configuration, upon connecting the HDMI cable to your TV and, if necessary, switching your TV to the correct input source you will result and you seeing your phone screen projected on your TV.
 |
| Phone screen projected onto the monitor via MHL. |
At the start of the article I talked about how I wanted to make my SGS2 more usable as a mobile work platform. All of the testing and learning so far has been conducted on my TV in the living room. The next step is to start using this to assist my work, so I packed the setup in my bag and took it to work with me.
Real world use
Arriving at work I was feeling rather excited about hooking up my phone to my screen so that I could use it to display information such as my calendar. That's when I ran into my first obstacle : between my monitors in my dual-screen setup I have every single connection option (DisplayPort, DVI, VGA etc) EXCEPT HDMI!
Looking at the array of connectors, one jumped out at me : DVI.
 |
| DVI Connector on the back of my monitor |
My first thought was I would be able to use a HDMI-DVI adapter to act as an interface between the HDMI output of the adapter and the DVI socket on my monitor.
 |
| HDMI-DVI Adaptor |
Feeling optimistic with the adapter in hand I got everything hooked up but I was greeted with a blank screen. It turns out the the MHL adapter can't drive the signal through the adapter which is slightly disappointing.
Return to home
Coming home I was very disappointed, I had hoped to be able to use my phone as a mobile workstation while at work (when on my break of course!), despite this I was determined to try and make this work.
The first thing I noticed was that whilst the phone screen was on my monitor, it only filled the middle of the screen.
It turned out to be a simple fix, simply turning the phone onto its side means that the image would be adjusted to fill the screen.
Now that I have connectivity from the phone to the screen, I do have to try hard to not think that my monitor is now a touch screen! Ideally I could do with a stand that would keep the phone in the landscape position. Despite this I have found it useful having things like Inbox by Gmail and Google Calendar open - it worked especially well on my dual screen setup in my bedroom which is great for multi-tasking and now that I've virtually completed a migration to using Google I ensure that my Google account is fully sync'ed across all my devices.
In my follow up post to this, I will go into more detail about interfacing with the phone and the now, larger and improved display to further improve my productivity.
Ciao for now!
No comments:
Post a Comment