Due to health and safety considerations associated with the increased risk of COVID-19 contamination, the Huawei DEVELOPER CONFERENCE 2020 was held only for a limited audience at the company’s headquarters in Songshan Lake in Dongguan, China between 10th to 12th September 2020. The event was also streamed live for everyone else interested in Huawei’s advancements in software and hardware products. 

Among other announcements and reveals, Huawei used the event to provide details on the technical upgrades and share important information on the development of their Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) ecosystem, which was especially important for their growing developer community. 

With the support of Huawei partners, the HDC event attracted the attention of both developers and media worldwide whilst also helping to build customer trust and confidence. We wrote more extensively about the event in another post on our blog.

How did the Huawei-BSG collaboration come about?

When Huawei was looking for a partner that would take care of the Cast+ project, Better Software Group was the perfect candidate. Not only were we the ones with the necessary expertise, but also had a solid track record of similar implementations under our belt.

As the project kicked off, we received a Cast+ sample application and were tasked with integrating it with Huawei’s Android set-top box – a device we had previously worked with in the past. We knew the project might one day flesh out into a fully-fledged Android TV replacement. We took the job with due diligence and assigned it to our Senior Developer, Paweł Cyroń, who headed the project.

Supported by the Huawei team, we successfully finalized the app integration. But that was only the beginning. Soon after that, with a working prototype ready, we proposed further steps to improve the app’s user experience. Among all the enhancements we made, we found a way to allow users to project the phone screen to TV without making them launch the application manually. We believed modern users simply expect such functionality. 

How does Cast+ work?

Cast+ starts automatically and remains active in the background allowing the user to use the Wireless Projection feature. The concept behind Cast+ is really simple at the core and basically replicates the Chromecast experience. Cast+ facilitates fast, stable, and low-latency collaboration between mobile phones and external large screens, delivering a seamless, cross-device collaborative experience, and a responsive mobile phone-centric ecosystem.

The challenge when developing the Cast+ feature was to use a background service to register a host and make Cast+ consistently discoverable when found in the same WiFi network. Cast+ allows the user a seamless mirroring experience when casting from a Huawei Smartphone to a set-top box. With low-latency performance, you can actually use Cast+ connect with a Bluetooth gaming controller to enjoy a “Console-Like” experience. Cast+ is available on Android mobile devices running EMUI 10.1 or later.

The advantages of Cast+

  • Quick discovery and stable connection
  • High-definition and low-latency
  • Leading multi-screen collaboration capabilities, with countermeasures preventing artifacts and frame-freezing

Cast+ is an impressive feature, but it should also be emphasized that it’s still a work in progress and many of its functionalities are yet to be polished before the official public release. There is still much to do before Cast+ gets broadly adopted by users worldwide, which results from a couple of notable limitations:

  • Huawei Cast Engine is not yet compatible with Miracast, AirPlay, and Google Cast on third-party devices.
  • Devices that integrate the Huawei Cast Engine SDK must comply with the Huawei Cast Engine UX Design Specification, which is provided by Huawei after the contract is signed between the parties.
  • When an update for Huawei Cast Engine is available, it will be provided to the third-party device manufacturers in the form of a binary software package, rather than being pushed over the air. The detailed update strategy will be negotiated between Huawei and the applicable manufacturers, on a case-by-case basis.

BSG at Huawei Developer Conference 

We took part in the Developer Conference as a Huawei partner company. During the event’s Tech Sessions, we made an appearance in the Smart Device section and shared some details on the development process of the Cast+ feature. We made a presentation detailing the development process and presented a demo of the feature. 

The Cast+ feature is intended to seamlessly bridge the gap between big and small devices, facilitating effortless cross-device media streaming. It allows the user to use a mirroring option at any time when using STB with Huawei Smartphone. Projection is available in EMUI starting from version 10. 

Our work has been recognized as an important contribution to Huawei’s mission of building a new ecosystem that’s both functional and highly performant. 

The Cast+ demo

To detail the development process behind Cast+ and our role in making the feature a reality, we prepared a short video and a product demo detailing the results of our work on the project. 

We presented the Cast+ product demo to the developer audience at the conference, along with commentaries from the BSG CEO Bartłomiej Lozia and the project’s head developer Paweł Cyroń. To showcase our Cast+ Host Service, we used the Huawei P40 Pro phone and projected its screen to the set-top box running Android 8.1.

To activate the Cast+ feature, you simply need to pull down the status bar and find Wireless Projection in the shortcut options. Once you press the icon, the smartphone immediately searches for Cast+ receivers connected to the WiFi. We’ve made sure to make the process as fast as possible, and demonstrated it in the product demo. The Huawei Demo STB immediately showed on the list of supported devices. 

During the Cast+ demo we wanted to emphasize how seamlessly the feature integrates with other apps in the EMUI ecosystem. To show how smoothly the set-top box handles streaming from the phone screen, we launched App Gallery from the connected Huawei P40 Pro. With the phone’s 90hz screen refresh rate and QHD resolution you could almost feel the crisp video quality on the TV.

Huawei recognizes BSG with the Outstanding Partner Award

Our contribution and hard work put into the Cast+ feature didn’t go unnoticed, and we received Huawei’s HDC Outstanding Partner Award. 

We are very honored to accept the distinction from Huawei and are looking forward to the future of our collaboration on the feature and business partnership.

Outstanding_Partner_Huawei_Award

Summary

We are extremely happy to have worked on Huawei Cast+ and proud of what we were able to achieve working hand in hand with Huawei’s team. Cast+ is just what we’d hoped it would be: it delivers smooth projection performance and is resilient to network instability. The enthusiasm is reflected in Bartlomiej Lozia’s own words: 

We are excited to be on this journey with Huawei. For some time now we have been working with their team, discussing different approaches to create something great.  We are looking forward to developing more functionalities on Cast+ with Huawei and putting to use our experience to enhance their product.

Stay tuned with our blog for more updates on our Huawei partnership and the development of the Cast+ feature…

…and some behind-the-scenes photos 😉