TeamViewer provides remote desktop software that lets you quickly and easily login to a Windows, Mac, or Linux computer from another computer. Earlier this year TeamViewer released an iPhone app that lets you control a computer from an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. Now there’s an Android app as well.
TeamViewer for Android v6.0.1 is still technically a public beta, but it works quite well on my Nexus One. You just have to download it from the TeamViewer website, because it’s not available from the Android Market yet.
The controls are well suited for the small screen: You move from left to right across a screen by dragging left and right. Tap to click, and tap with two-fingers to double-click. Because it’s hard to hit a precise point with your fingertip, you don’t actually tap on the screen where you want to click. Instead you move the screen around so that the mouse cursor is pointing where you want to click, and then tap anywhere.
You can also pull up the tools menu to reboot your computer, hit Ctrl+Alt+Del, or block remote user input.
The thing that surprised me most about the mobile app is that it’s almost fast enough to stream video from your PC to your phone in realtime. Sure, it won’t do 30 frames per second, but it certainly does more than 5. Unfortunately it doesn’t stream audio, so you’ll want to watch subtitled videos… or none at all.
Aside from using TeamViewer to login to a computer remotely to email yourself some files, help a friend diagnose a PC problem, or you know, do anything really useful, you could just use TeamViewer as a way to surf the web using a desktop browser… from your phone. It’s a pretty neat trick, although not something I’d want to do every day.
The TeamViewer Android app is available as a free download for now, although the company tends to offer free and Pro versions of its software, so a Pro version may be on the way.
You can check out some more screenshots as well as my hands-on video after the break.
thanks Lee!
Aside from using TeamViewer to login to a computer remotely to email yourself some files.