Android is slowly but steadily closing the precious gap between phones and PCs, an area where seamless device pairing across iPhones and Macs has been a strong selling point for Apple. Remember the Phone Link system that provided an Android phone with cross-device benefits similar to the Apple ecosystem for the Android-Windows pairing? Well, OnePlus (and Oppo) are adopting it.
OnePlus has already started rolling out the Android 14-based OxygenOS 14 update, and among all the new features, it will also introduce a native Microsoft Phone Link setup. The setup process will be seamless, as Windows 11 PCs now come with the pairing app pre-installed. You just need to scan once, and you are ready to go.
In fact, Phone Link pairing for Android-Windows provides a much more rewarding experience than what you get between iPhone and Mac. For example, once pairing is done, you can mirror your phone’s UI on a PC. Media assets stored on Android phones are also accessible on Windows PC, with drag-and-drop support, without any wired connection.
Of course, your app notifications, calls, and messages also appear neatly in a cluster on the paired Windows machine. And yes, you can make and receive calls too. “You can view and interact with your mobile apps on your PC, and the Multiple Apps feature lets you open apps simultaneously,” OnePlus says.
And like Apple’s universal clipboard system, you can copy and paste content between your OnePlus phone and a Windows PC. Apart from OnePlus, Oppo phones sold in Asia and select western countries will also offer similar features.
So far, I like this feature on Samsung phones because the Korean smartphone maker was the first to enable this deep integration with Windows machines. It’s great to see that Android smartphone makers are closing the gap and not only catching up with Apple, but also surpassing it in meaningful ways.