After Apple announced Continuity on iOS8, allowing users to move from Mac, to iPhone, to iPad simultaneously, the developers on Android knew they had to play catchup. Motorola Connect is already available for Moto devices, but PushBullet and EvolveSMS are both looking to branch out to all Android devices.
The solution from PushBullet and EvolveSMS is not fully baked into the system yet, the developers are still working on top of Android’s limitations when connecting to PC. The Android platform is still more open to developer changes, meaning third parties can implement text messages and hopefully phone calls in the future.
Both apps are currently running the new feature in beta and looking for developer/user feedback on the subject. This is only the first we will see from text messages and phone calls on the PC, we expect Microsoft will be looking to implement a similar feature on Windows Phone 8.1 and Google might want to create a first party app.
To get the feature right now, users can go to the Google+ page for both PushBullet and EvolveSMS and apply to be a beta tester through Google Play. The beta test is not for everyone, the beta build will have bugs and runtime issues, as all beta builds will have before launch.
For the PushBullet app, users will also need to download the Chrome extension on their desktop browser, allowing notifications to show up on the PC. EvolveSMS does not have a Chrome extension but the app still has the feature and it works in different ways.
It is interesting that app developers are looking to tackle the market of text messages and phone calls on a browser/desktop, even though Apple delivered arguable the most well designed way to use this feature, we still don’t know if anyone cares about this feature and whether third party alternatives on Android will be anywhere near as good.
