KDE Connect 1.10 Released To Improve The Android Device Integration

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KDE Connect 1.10 Released To Improve The Android Device Integration

KDE Connect is the interesting project allowing communication/sharing between your KDE desktop and an Android smartphone/tablet whether it be multimedia content, text messages, or files and more. KDE Connect 1.10 further enhances this interesting effort to bridge Android mobile devices to the KDE desktop...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=KDE-Connect-1.10

[Guest]

I was wondering when they'd get around to targeting Android 8.0 - hopefully it will work better now. Looks like they're already using foreground service which should work better.

[Danny3]

KDE Connect is absolutely fantastic!
But there are problems too like:
I've upgraded my Samsung galaxy S4 mini phone to Android Pie (version 9) with Lineage OS
And I cannot browse the phone files anymore.
Clicking on the browse button shows an error like this:
The process for the kdeconnect://6859e443a7d305ab protocol died unexpectedly.
I curios if this version fixes it, even though it says that it has better support only for Oreo (version 8).
It seems that it is has not been updated on F-droid yet to test it.

I hope that in the future versions they will eliminate the middle man (the router) requirement and just create a direct connection between the computer and the phone over Wifi (like ad-hoc) or over Bluetooth.
Over Bluetooth might be better for power efficiency.

Also I hope that one day they will add the option of REVERSE Remote nput like using the computer's mouse and keyboard to control the phone.
I think this could be useful to install apps or play phone games on computer by showing the phone's screen in a window and sending back the mouse and keyboard inputs for control.

In any case, the developers deserve a big thank you from us!

[MagicMyth]

KDE Connect is absolutely fantastic!
But there are problems too like:
I've upgraded my Samsung galaxy S4 mini phone to Android Pie (version 9) with Lineage OS
And I cannot browse the phone files anymore.
Clicking on the browse button shows an error like this:
The process for the kdeconnect://6859e443a7d305ab protocol died unexpectedly.
I curios if this version fixes it, even though it says that it has better support only for Oreo (version 8).
It seems that it is has not been updated on F-droid yet to test it.

I hope that in the future versions they will eliminate the middle man (the router) requirement and just create a direct connection between the computer and the phone over Wifi (like ad-hoc) or over Bluetooth.
Over Bluetooth might be better for power efficiency.

Also I hope that one day they will add the option of REVERSE Remote nput like using the computer's mouse and keyboard to control the phone.
I think this could be useful to install apps or play phone games on computer by showing the phone's screen in a window and sending back the mouse and keyboard inputs for control.

In any case, the developers deserve a big thank you from us!

I had those same issues and they seemed fixed for me now on Android Pie.

As for the connection. Bluetooth would use more power if your phone and computer are on the same network already. It is more efficient to do these things over the WiFi router but I agree it would be great if the option of Direct WiFi or Bluetooth was there for when on the move.

[Azrael5]

I cannot send files from the smartphone to Neon OS and viceversa, what can be the cause?

[CTown]

Glad to hear more about KDE Connect. One of my favorite features is replying to text messages from my laptop. Though, I never figured out how to send a text message through KDE Connect without the "reply button" on a notification on a received text message. So, if I clear my notifications, I don't know how to send text messages...

[Vistaus]

And still, no Bluetooth backend, so I still can't use it. When will they finally implement that? I know I'm not the only one asking for this, quite a few people have expressed their support on the related bug report.

[Danny3]

I had those same issues and they seemed fixed for me now on Android Pie.

As for the connection. Bluetooth would use more power if your phone and computer are on the same network already. It is more efficient to do these things over the WiFi router but I agree it would be great if the option of Direct WiFi or Bluetooth was there for when on the move.

I was thinking about my use case at work where I put my phone on the laptop between the keyboard and the screen or next to the laptop.
In any case the distance between my laptop and my phone is between 1cm to 10 cm.
I'm pretty sure that if there were a direct connection between them, it would be much more power efficient than the current setup where the router is not even in the same room, but in the one that is one floor down.
Compared to the laptop, sometimes the phone has trouble keeping a stable wifi connection.
As for Bluetooth compared to Wifi on power consumption, on a quick search I found this article where it says that Bluetooth is 26% more power efficient:

http://www.clearevo.com/ecodroidlink/bluetooth_vs_wifi_on_android_battery_consumption/

[MagicMyth]

I was thinking about my use case at work where I put my phone on the laptop between the keyboard and the screen or next to the laptop.
In any case the distance between my laptop and my phone is between 1cm to 10 cm.
I'm pretty sure that if there were a direct connection between them, it would be much more power efficient than the current setup where the router is not even in the same room, but in the one that is one floor down.
Compared to the laptop, sometimes the phone has trouble keeping a stable wifi connection.
As for Bluetooth compared to Wifi on power consumption, on a quick search I found this article where it says that Bluetooth is 26% more power efficient:

http://www.clearevo.com/ecodroidlink/bluetooth_vs_wifi_on_android_battery_consumption/

I know Bluetooth (when used and implemented right) should in theory use less than WiFi. My point was that most people have their phone already on their wireless network for Internet. In that situation the Wifi is always active and KDE Connect using it adds very little to the power usage (as wifi is already on). Thus WiFi only < WiFi + Bluetooth. Also some of the features like file transfer would be more power efficient over WiFi anyway (faster data transfer leading to quicker completion times allowing the WiFi module to sleep sooner). At your work with a weak WiFi signal Bluetooth might make more sense and as I mentioned some form of direct connection is certainly a feature they should support in time.

[starshipeleven]

And still, no Bluetooth backend, so I still can't use it. When will they finally implement that? I know I'm not the only one asking for this, quite a few people have expressed their support on the related bug report.

When the people asking for this hire a developer to do it, afaik the main devs aren't against it but won't work on this.