Nextbit’s Baton Brings OS X Continuity-Like Features To Android

One of the new features that Apple introduced in OS X Yosemite is the ability for users to continue what they are doing on their phone on their computers. For example instead of picking up your phone to answer your call, you could answer it on your computer without disrupting your work.

Users will also be able to type up a report on their phone and pick up where they left off on their computer. Pretty cool, right? Unfortunately this is a feature exclusive to iOS and OS X devices, so what about Android? Well for Android, you guys will have a feature called Baton. This is developed by Nextbit, a startup company that was launched by former Googlers.

The concept of Baton and Pass are somewhat similar to OS X Yosemite’s Continuity and Handoff features, albeit slightly different in the sense that it allows for the passing of action between mobile devices. With Baton, it allows users to sync and store their mobile data online, which will include the state of the applications themselves.

What this means is that if you were editing a photo halfway on your phone and want to do it on your tablet, all you’d have to do is pick up your tablet, launch the app and you’d be good to go without having to transfer photos or start all over again. As for the Pass feature, this will work togeter with Baton and let users transfer whatever it is they are working on to a nearby device, thus waking it from its sleep state and launching the app in question.

As it stands, the beta version of Baton is available via the CyanogenMod ROM, although Nextbit has also announced that they will be releasing a public version later this year.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Android