One of the neat-o features introduced in Android 2.2 (or Froyo) is “Chrome-to-Phone”, which gives the ability to take what you’re viewing in the Google Chrome browser (on your PC/Mac [edit: or Linux box!]), and push it straight to your Froyo phone.
I’ve not yet seen this in person, though, because I’m stuck on a pre-Froyo build of Android. Which sucks.
But today, that changes: I found someone that — like me — was longing for some Chrome-to-Phone action on their Android 2.1 phone. Unlike me, however, they did something about it.
And so I introduce to you LinkPush: the Chrome-to-Phone alternative for the rest of us.
LinkPush is the combination of a Chrome Extension and an Android application, and both must be installed for it to work.
Once they’re both installed, you simply click on the new “Send link to phone” button in Chrome, open up the LinkPush app on your Android phone and *whammo* you’re redirected to the site.
It tracks whose links are whose by using their Google account, so you’ll have to log in once in Chrome, and once on your phone before it will work.
I’ve just installed it and tried it out, and it does what it says.
However, it’s not without it’s caveats: it only takes the current URL and sends it to your phone, this means that if you’re on a site that has form data or an indirect URL, you will probably be met with a different (error) page. So, if you’re in the middle of reading a big article, don’t expect it to pick up where you left off.
Also, although it will open up the Google Maps application when sent a Google Maps link, it wasn’t able to open up the same map I was viewing in Chrome. Instead, Google Maps threw up an “Unable to load the URL” error.
I wasn’t looking for magic, though, so this is enough to keep me happy.
Now, I just wish it could work the other way around, too…
[via Droid Life]