Hands on with Xbox SmartGlass
At E3, I was wowed by a demonstration of Microsoft’s SmartGlass. The application brought a second screen to the Xbox 360 experience, offering an alternative way to control the device through the use of a smartphone. About 5 months later, Smartglass has arrived. Earlier this week I had a chance to play around with it. How does it stack up to the demonstration I saw? Read on to find out.
Above is a demonstration video released last month from Microsoft that shows off some of the touted capabilities of SmartGlass. In it, we see the Xbox being controlled from all Windows devices. However, SmartGlass is also available for iOS and Android devices. I used an iPhone 4S to test out SmartGlass on my Xbox.
The first thing you need to do with SmartGlass is sync it with your Xbox Live account. Once you’ve done this, you can access your Xbox through the app. To actually control your screen however, you need to be on the same wireless network as the Xbox.
This is the first screen you see after loading the app prior to connecting the remote. You can see what games and apps you’ve used on your Xbox as well as what you can launch from here.
After you’ve connected to the Xbox to use the remote, your phone becomes a controller. You tap to use the “A” or “OK” button. The “B,” “X,” and “Y” buttons are all accessed from the corners of your smartphone screen.
You swipe to move side to side as well as up and down. You can hold your finger on one side of the screen to move quickly through items. However, this can be a little unwieldy at times and it’s easy to overshoot the item you’re trying to find. Overall, this method of movement is pretty responsive and works well.
When you launch a proprietary app such as Internet Explorer, the interface changes to a simple black background. From here, the screen acts simply as a mouse. This is my favorite feature of SmartGlass. It makes browsing the web on your television a simple and, dare I say, fun experience. When you need to type, you can use the keyboard on your smartphone instead of the absolutely dreadful Xbox keyboard.
In my opinion, that is SmartGlass’ greatest strength as an application. Using your smartphone’s keyboard is a much more pleasing experience than the Xbox’s UI. After all, a gaming controller was never designed as a keyboard. However, SmartGlass’ greatest strength is also its greatest weakness for one reason: it does not work across all Xbox apps.
The reason I was looking forward to SmartGlass was its ability to make my television content consumption at home simpler. I was hoping to streamline my use of Netflix, HBO Go, and Hulu Plus through the app. However, you cannot use the keyboard function on any of those apps (as far as I can tell). You are forced to use each app’s keyboard system which, for who knows what, was switched from the already clunky Xbox 360 on-screen keyboard to a bizarre rotary phone type keyboard earlier this year.
I’ve yet to explore using SmartGlass as a second screen in terms of content consumption along with games, but to me that is really more of a secondary feature. To me, the most important features are already there, even if they aren’t fully implemented across the Xbox interface. All in all, SmartGlass is excellent for a free application. If it gets better integration across the 360′s applications in the future, it will be even better.
At this point, you have nothing to lose by downloading it so I suggest you give it a shot. It can only get better from here.
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