So I got a Nexus Q not too long ago, and after a few days of using it for its intended purpose, I got bored. Alright all it can really do is stream music from Google Play right now, so it’s easy to get bored, but after installing a launcher I realized that not only was it a normal android device, but the only thing stopping you from using it as a normal android device was the is no good way to control it.
This got me thinking, what if Google created a ‘Q’ intent in the SDK that would allow users to run normal apps on their Q while being controlled from there phone?
Here’s how I imagine it working, the user would pick an App from the Play store, let’s say MXPlayer, a popular video player. In the store, it would recommend that you install the ‘Q’ version of the app, and just like on other android devices you would just choose ‘Install to Nexus Q’ or whatever and it would be downloaded.
Here’s where the magic happens, once the user opens the matching app on their phone, it would broadcast a multicast intent over the network and wait for a Q to respond, then if there are Qs that respond to the Intent, the App would show an icon that once clicked would basically control the app on the Q from the matching app on the phone.
Transferring data would be a breeze too, the Q already support Wifi direct, so the app could initialize a Wifi Direct connection between the Q and the Phone or of course it could stream over the network.
This senario would also prevent the app author from having to write a completely different app for the Q and would provide an effective way for early adopters to use their device.