Samsung 'Flow' Apple Continuity-Like Feature Hits Google Play in Beta

Samsung introduced Flow, a feature similar to Apple's Continuity for iOS and OS X Yosemite, at last year's Developer Conference. Now, the South Korean company has launched the Flow app in beta, which essentially lets users move videos, calls, notifications and more from one Samsung device to another Samsung device seamlessly.

Samsung Flow Beta app is now available to download via Google Play, and is in public beta, as the name suggests. For now, it only works on the newest Samsung Android devices, namely the Galaxy S5, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy Alpha, Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy Note Edge, and Galaxy Tab S.

The app has been created by the Think Tank Team in association with Samsung. The company touts that the "Samsung Flow isn't just an app" but a platform as it allows apps to transition activities across devices and across time.

To use Flow, users will have to install the Flow app on the Samsung device and add it to the collection. After that, users can start transferring and deferring activities right away via the Flow app.

Flow feature works in three parts - Transfer, Defer, and Notify. Transfer lets users read, work, and move calls between different Samsung devices. Defer allows users to hold on to tasks and resume it later, even on another Samsung device. Lastly, Notify makes any Flow-enabled television, PC, tablet, or smartwatch display notifications of incoming or missed calls, low-battery warnings, new software updates, text messages and more from the connected device. The Flow app is currently supported by limited apps including Google Maps, SoundCloud, Pinterest, Twitter, Yelp, and YouTube.

Think Tank Team details how Samsung's Flow communicate, "Flow uses Bluetooth LE to advertise a device's availability, and it uses Wi-Fi (if devices are on the same network) or Bluetooth (if they're not) to communicate between devices." Samsung is expected to expand Flow feature across all Samsung devices.