Samsung smartphone owners already have a number of options for mirroring the contents of their display onto a Samsung TV, but it seems the South Korea-based tech giant is about to introduce yet another solution — and one that, frankly, looks pretty cool.
Samsung this week filed a trademark with the European Union Intellectual Property Office for a new software feature called “Samsung Tap View,” and the description included with the filing is pretty much what you’d expect with a name like that. The idea here is for a user to be able to tap their phone to their TV, which at that point would begin a mirroring of the mobile device display onto the TV.
The trademark filing was spotted by Dutch tech news site LetsGoDigital, which reports that not only would this solution work with tablets and smartwatches, as well as phones — but, as envisioned, it seems to be possible to tap multiple mobile devices to your TV and mirror more than one display that way.
Existing solutions for displaying the screen of a mobile device on a Samsung TV (and vice versa) include Samsung’s AllShare Cast service, as well as the SmartThings app that comes with a built-in screen mirroring feature. Apple users certainly have their own solution as well, such as a screen mirroring feature as well as AirPlay mode, while there’s also a way for Sony TVs to mirror screens using Near-Field Communication technology.
I personally mirror my smartphone to my TV at home quite often, mostly because it can be a bit straining to stare at the phone all day and the option to check out what you want on the larger screen is a much more pleasant option. Sometimes, it’s when I’m too lazy to go into an app on the TV to watch the same thing I’m trying to get to, since TV user experiences are still by and large more complicated than the simple tap-based UI on the phone.
With CES just around the corner, we already know that Samsung will roll out its new smart TV models for the first half of the year during the big annual consumer electronics bash in Las Vegas. It seems likely that this new “Tap View” feature might get some attention at the trade show, as well.
