How to get AllShare on the Galaxy S2 to work

If you have the Galaxy S2, you would have noticed an app in the list called AllShare:

See, that blue one in the top row.

Now, at first it didn't work on my phone, it just didn't connect. What you can do with it, however, is actually pretty cool - you can play items that's on your PC on your phone, and vice versa. NEAT!

I did a little digging, and found out how to get it to work. Note, I have Windows 7, and use the normal Media Player program that comes per default out with Windows, so this guide will help you to get yours working if you have the same OS and use Media Player...

So, to get it to work, you must first allow your PC to be accessed in this way. In Media Player, that's quite simple to do. When your Media Player is open, just below the Title bar, you'll see the Back and Forward buttons, and below that the Organize, Stream and Create playlist options:

Clicking on the Stream option, gives you a few options:

If you want to control your Media Player from your phone, tick the "Allow remote control of my Player..." option, and if you want to play the files on your PC on your phone, tick "Automatically allow devices to play my media..." option. You'll get some warnings, but if you're confident that your network is secure, and you don't mind sharing your files like this, you can go ahead and enable the features.

That should set up your PC to allow the AllShare app to fully work now.

So, the AllShare app works like so - starting it up gives you this:

From this screen you can share the Videos, Pictures and Audio files on your phone - that is, view them on your PC. The only small issue I have here, is when tapping on any of the options, it just gives you one big list with everything of that category on your phone, no folders or any order, so if you have lots of files, it can take a while to sift through them.

Here's a list of my Videos:

And, when tapping one, you get to choose on which device you'd like to play it:

Playing the file gives you the controls for it on your phone, but it obviously plays on the device (in my case, my PC):

And here's a screen shot to serve as proof that the movie is playing on my PC:

Now you have to admit, once again, that is a very cool feature! :)

You can just as easily play the files that are on your PC (loaded in your Media Player) on your phone. You tap on the Remote device option at the top, which will show you all the devices that have media sharing like this enabled on your network:

Tapping on the device, will open it up, and give you the options to browse the various media files in your Media Player, including play lists.

Here is my Collective Soul (GREAT BAND!) playlist:

And tapping on a file, plays it in your phone:

The AllShare app is really cool as you can see, just another awesome feature of the Samsung Galaxy S2. Damn this is a cool phone, if you're even considering getting one, just stop hesitating and DO IT!!

So, that covers how to work with the AllShare app that comes with the phone. It would have been nice for there to be some sort of tutorial or manual on how to get it working, but, luckily, I've written this short guide :)

Till next time!