Remember when everyone wanted to own your phone and your laptop? Dell’s finally tossing in the towel (via Windows Central).
On a support page, Dell announced that it’s discontinuing Mobile Connect, the program that syncs your phone’s texts, calls, and notifications to your computer. While Dell is stopping downloads on November 30th for users in the US, Canada, and Japan, it will no longer be available to use starting January 31st, 2023. The service is shutting down even earlier for users outside these three countries, with downloads stopping on July 31st and a total shutdown occurring on November 30th.
Dell Mobile Connect — sometimes called Alienware Mobile Connect — made its debut in 2018 and is, naturally, supposed to work best with Dell laptops from 2018 or later. The program’s compatible with both iPhone and Android phones, but it offered more features for Android devices right out of the gate — like screen-mirroring, which arrived on the Mobile Connect app for iPhone in 2020.
Microsoft offers a similar feature on Windows 10 and 11 PCs, called Phone Link (previously known as the Your Phone app). Phone Link does everything that Mobile Connect does, letting you mirror notifications on your PC, take calls and texts, as well as transfer files. But the main difference is that Phone Link doesn’t support iPhones, whereas Mobile Connect does.
If you like Mobile Connect, it seems like its capabilities aren’t going away for good. As noted by Windows Central, Intel actually bought the software behind Dell Mobile Connect in 2021, called Screenovate. Intel already showed off its plans to sync your PC with your Android, iPhone, and smartwatch at CES 2022, and the capability’s set to roll out on Intel Evo devices towards the end of this year.