Need some help with Android "remote"

[PeterSt]

I hope that someone can help me out on this one ...

When I use Teamviewer on an iPad (taking over a PC's screen), all is fine. We move a finger and a mouse pointer tracks that; when the mouse pointer is in place, we tap and it works out as a click. All nice.

With an Android tablet (3.2) however, it is merely the screen which moves (swipes) and the mouse pointer stays put (it may move a little too, but the screen moves more). I have been working for hours on this, but it just can't be done any normal way. The problem seems to be that the screen resolution of the source PC does not adapt to the tablet's size. Btw, when this does happen as should (like with the iPad) somewhere around the Teamviewer screen will appear black bars. Not with the Android. There all sides of the taken over screen fall outside the tablet's physical screen, and so moving the mouse acts like moving the taken over screen's borders into the borders of the tablet.

Btw, to me it looks like this is all made for smart phones, where it would be hard to do it differently than this. *Then* you'd want it to work exactly this this (because no way any taken over screen will fit in the small area of such a screen).

A. Can this be done somehow after all ?
B. Does anyone know of a preferrably free "RDC" tool that does this correct for the Android (free, because it is for you yourself).

To be honest, I am asking here because it takes me too much time. This, while someone out there should be using this conveniently.

Thanks a lot for any help,
Peter

[PeterSt]

With an Android tablet (3.2)

4.0 the same.

[Calibrator]

hey Pete,

have you tried RealVNC ?

http://www.realvnc.com/products/download.html

http://www.realvnc.com/products/android/index.html

I have been using that successfully with my phone (Samsung Galaxy S - Gingerbread 2.3 ) and tablet (Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 - Honeycomb 3.2 ) to access my Windows 7 PC's.

Provided the screen aspect ratio of the PC matches the aspect ratio of the phone/tablet you won't get screen scrolling on the phone/tablet, unless you zoom in. ie. the screen is static and the mouse moves to all parts of the screen just like the PC does.

If that is the behaviour you need then give it a try.

If I can assist in any testing, without having the bluetooth dongles, just holla.

Cheers,

Russ

[PeterSt]

G'day there Russ. OF COURSE I have been waiting for your response. Haha. And yes, RealVNC would have been my next option, but I stopped when I saw it cost a few box (8 euros or so). But hey, if this is going to work for sure, then it should be fine enough.

But will it ?

Provided the screen aspect ratio of the PC matches the aspect ratio of the phone/tablet you won't get screen scrolling on the phone/tablet

This is the whole point I guess. It just never will match. So, with TeamViewer I could mimic the aspect ratio quite close by mangling with the source PC's screen resolution (which is a stupid thing to do of course), but farther than "quite close" I couldn't get. So, assumed you will be seeing the same as in that quite close situation here, it still won't work at all (maybe if you like brain damages). But maybe it depends on how it exactly works in detail. For example, the user can't know whether first the screen "needs" to move a litte before it's locked at a side and the mouse starts to move. Anyway :

We obviously can't depend on the ratio being the same. Let's say I am testing with a laptop of 1440x900 (1.60) while the tablet is 1024x768 (1.33 and btw the same as an iPad). So Russ, if you have a similar situation (both ARs being auite off from eachother) then yes, I would be happy to learn whether you can nicely keep on drinking that cup of tee, or raher jump from a bridge first.
And since I am talking to you directly now, you will understand that in this situation black bars should appear at top/bottom so the width gets locked to the sides. Nothing much different from how movies work, although as you will remember from another era, it is the least understood thing in movies. Maybe someone can call Google.


One more maybe stupid question :
Is it possible to try before you buy with this stuff ? So it is about this too; I can keep on buying just for trying, but I rather go a Jailbreak route (if *that* exists for Android).

[PeterSt]

Oh :

If I can assist in any testing, without having the bluetooth dongles, just holla.

This is not related to XXHighEnd at this moment. So, just taking over the screen in an environment you are used to, will do for this.

And thanks of course !
Peter

[PeterSt]

Maybe interesting for others :

We now have an iPad around for a year, and up till today I can't deal with the stupid thing. I'm too much of a logical user I suppose, and nothing goes without a manual. Not even the most obvious things (which are not obvious at all). Not so with Android. I didn't have a single problem with it so far. Yea, this little annoying thing.

But also :
From my maybe limited experience as a computer user in general (I think the contrary of course), I can feel that Android is not as smart as the iPad (or iOS) in the real technical area. Swiping (scrolling) is not as smooth and I don't think this is the lack of processing capacity; you can see that there's being thing done in between by the OS and that holds up (at the ms level). So for the general experience (what it is about) I don't like it 100%. For understandability it's the other way around.
I am not sure what is more important. Neither satisfies really.

Things go strange from another angle as well. For example, if you look for something in the app store. Now, where are these sorting possibilities ? without those (like the iPad provides them) how ever find something in that pile ?

Oh well ...

[PeterSt]

Small update :

I have at least one app running satisfactory now, so it can be done on Android. This one is not free (xtralogic), so on to the next one ...

Peter

[Calibrator]

So Russ, if you have a similar situation (both ARs being auite off from eachother) then yes, I would be happy to learn whether you can nicely keep on drinking that cup of tee, or raher jump from a bridge first.
And since I am talking to you directly now, you will understand that in this situation black bars should appear at top/bottom so the width gets locked to the sides. Nothing much different from how movies work

further to the PM's etc. and for the benefit of others, RealVNC will zoom in or out to "lock" the image on your controller, and it will lock it either a "pillarboxed" or "letterboxed" mode depending how the aspect ratios of the PC and controller relate. It also depends if you are viewing in landscape or portrait mode. Regardless, it will lock to either the width or height, so there will be no screen movement.

I believe for best results you should consider setting your PC's screen res to the native res of your controller anyway, so you establish pixel to pixel mapping.

=============

It's generally recognised that the Android OS "Honeycomb [v3.2]" is a bit of a mangy dog , and was essentially a go-between an OS for a phone and a tablet. Coupled with the customisation that the phone hardware companies such as Samsung/HTC etc added, and you get a suboptimal response in a lot of scenarios.

First thing most folks do is get rid of that customised launcher app ie. Samsung's TouchWIZ or HTC's Sense etc, and replace it with something like GO Launcher EX , available from the Market Place. A lot of the lag issues are eliminated and you have far more extensive GUI customisation at your disposal

The latest Android OS "Ice Cream Sandwich" ( ICS ), is a far better experience, and that OS is slowly being rolled out to the later hardware still stuck on versions 3.x or 2.x

I concur about the philosophy of the Android world. Keep it open architecture and development will generally be faster and more extensive. It was proven with the PC's and I expect it will follow suit on the phones/tablets. Majority of folks don't want to be locked into a dictatorial way of doing things.

I shall have a play with that alternative Peter if I can find it.

Cheers,

Russ

[PeterSt]

Ok, solved. With a little Help from my Friends down under ...

Remote RDP Lite (from Yongtao Wang, so you won't choose as wrong alike-named one) ... Look no further. The smartest thing I have seen. Just does *all* what we'd want. And even for free. But so good I rather like to buy the Luxury version and pay the man.

A pitty this doesn't work on the iPad.

Anwyay, a good solution now available for both the iPad and Android.