How to connect a smartphone to a TV: 7 ways | Articles | Telephones, Audio-visual equipment

A smart­phone as the main tool for visu­al con­tent is very con­ve­nient: you can watch videos, movies, view pho­to slideshows, play games on it. The only down­side is the small screen. But this is fix­able and is solved by con­nect­ing the phone to the TV.

In this text, we have col­lect­ed 7 ways to con­nect a smart­phone to a TV to watch a movie, run games or files. We will show you how to stream video con­tent from your phone to your TV using Wi-Fi, USB or HDMI cables. Con­sid­er con­nec­tion options for smart­phones on both Android and iOS.

There are many meth­ods for pair­ing a smart­phone with a TV — you just need to choose the most con­ve­nient one. Source: asurion.com

Universal ways: how to connect Android and Apple to a TV

To begin with, we will ana­lyze the options for con­nect­ing smart­phones on Android and iOS to the TV.

Connecting your phone to a TV via Wi-Fi Direct

This method is the most com­mon. It involves wire­less con­nec­tion of devices. Almost all mod­ern TVs have a Smart TV that allows you to use Wi-Fi Direct. With this con­nec­tion, the image from the phone’s dis­play is broad­cast to the big screen with­out degrad­ing the qual­i­ty.

Pros:

• wire­less con­nec­tion;
• suit­able for Android and iOS;
• qual­i­ty does not dete­ri­o­rate.

Minus­es:

• does not work on TVs with­out Smart TV.

Now we will tell you step by step how to con­nect your phone to a TV via Wi-Fi Direct. Every­thing is very sim­ple and any smart­phone is suit­able for this — iPhone, Sam­sung, Xiao­mi and oth­ers.

• Open the phone set­tings and find the item with wire­less net­works in the list.
• Find and con­nect Wi-Fi Direct.
• Do the same for the TV. You should open the net­work set­tings, find and enable the described func­tion. There is no spe­cif­ic step-by-step instruc­tion, since the menu on Sam­sung TVs is dif­fer­ent from LG, Sony or Xiao­mi.
• The devices will com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er. This usu­al­ly takes no more than one minute.
• After pair­ing, the TV screen will begin broad­cast­ing every­thing that hap­pens on the phone.

Pair­ing devices via Wi-Fi Direct is about the same as with reg­u­lar Wi-Fi. Source: samsung.com

This method allows you to view pho­tos or videos, turn on movies, run games, and so on.

Connecting a smartphone to a TV via HDMI

To pair devices with an HDMI cable, you will need a suit­able cable: HDMI — Type‑C, HDMI — microUSB or HDMI — Light­ning, depend­ing on the con­nec­tor in your smart­phone.

Pros:

• suit­able for Android and iOS;
• quick con­nec­tion — just con­nect the cable;
• The method works on all TVs.

Minus­es:

• suit­able cable required;
• not a wire­less con­nec­tion.

The instruc­tion is very sim­ple:

• You need to insert one end of the cable into the smart­phone, and the oth­er into the TV.
• In the TV set­tings, select the sig­nal source. This will be one of the HDMI ports.
• Your phone will start sync­ing with your TV.
• With­in a minute, the con­nec­tion will be com­plet­ed. The image on the TV will be auto­mat­i­cal­ly resized to fit.

In this way, you can con­nect smart­phones on Android and Apple to the TV. The main thing is to choose the right cable or use adapters.

Con­nect­ing via HDMI is a sim­ple, but not the most con­ve­nient way. Source: droidway.net

After the suc­cess­ful con­nec­tion of the two devices, the pic­ture from the phone dis­play will be dupli­cat­ed on the TV screen. Using this method, you can con­nect your smart­phone to a TV to watch movies or YouTube videos, run games, use mobile appli­ca­tions, and so on.

How to Connect Your Phone to Chromecast

A uni­ver­sal way to pair your smart­phone and TV. Suit­able for gad­gets run­ning Android and iOS. The TV can also be any­thing, the main thing is that it has an HDMI con­nec­tor. There is only one draw­back — you need to sep­a­rate­ly pur­chase the orig­i­nal Chrome­cast set-top box from Google or its equiv­a­lent. These devices cost from 3000 rubles.

Pros:

• suit­able for Android and iOS;
• the device dupli­cates the screen, allow­ing you to dis­play mobile games on the big screen.

Minus­es:

• you need to buy a sep­a­rate device.

Google’s Chrome­cast device looks like a reg­u­lar USB stick, but with a wire. Source: www.habr.com

The algo­rithm of actions when con­nect­ing the phone to the TV is the same, regard­less of the set-top box mod­el:

• First you need to con­nect your smart­phone with an HDMI cable.
• Install the Google Home pro­gram from the mar­ket and run it.
• Fol­low the sim­ple step-by-step instruc­tions, after which the image from the phone will be dis­played on the TV screen.

Con­nect­ing your phone via HDMI using Chrome­cast allows you not only to view pho­tos and videos from the gallery, but to dupli­cate the dis­play of the gad­get. Thanks to this, you can even play mobile games on the big screen. There are also con­soles for sale that trans­mit a sig­nal in 4K res­o­lu­tion.

Ways to connect an Android smartphone to a TV

Now con­sid­er the options for con­nect­ing gad­gets run­ning Android. They are not suit­able for Apple devices.

Connecting a phone via DLNA

DLNA is a method for exchang­ing media data between devices con­nect­ed to a sin­gle net­work. The main dif­fer­ence from Wi-Fi Direct is that the con­trol is imple­ment­ed not from the phone, but from the TV. Because of this, there is a restric­tion: you can only run files from your phone, but you won’t be able to watch YouTube videos or lis­ten to music on Spo­ti­fy.

Pros:

• wire­less con­nec­tion;
• You can con­nect two or more TVs.

Minus­es:

• only works for android.

DLNA also has an advan­tage that Wi-Fi Direct lacks. The tech­nol­o­gy allows you to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly con­nect sev­er­al TVs to the phone to broad­cast the same pic­ture. In fact, DLNA turns the phone into a media cen­ter with music, video and pho­tos. The TV acts as a play­er for all these files.

There must be a DLNA net­work in the TV set­tings that needs to be acti­vat­ed. Source: hi-tech.mail.ru

To con­nect a Xiao­mi phone or oth­er gad­get to the TV, DLNA devices must be sup­port­ed. The func­tion is avail­able in all mod­ern TV mod­els in Smart TV. To con­nect devices, you need:

• Install the Bub­ble­UP­nP pro­gram from Google Play on your smart­phone.
• Con­nect your smart­phone and TV to a sin­gle net­work. This means that both devices must receive Inter­net from the same source. For exam­ple, the TV is con­nect­ed to the router with a cable, and the smart­phone is con­nect­ed to it, but via Wi-Fi.
• Launch the appli­ca­tion.
• Enable search for avail­able data sources in TV set­tings.
• Find and select a DLNA serv­er, which is our phone.
• Find and run the desired file from the direc­to­ry.

Connecting a TV via a smartphone with Miracast

This method only works if the Mira­cast stan­dard is sup­port­ed by the phone and TV.

Pros:

• wire­less con­nec­tion;
• fast con­nec­tion.

Minus­es:

• only works for Android;
• phone and TV must sup­port Mira­cast.

To con­nect Xiao­mi to a TV, the instruc­tions are as fol­lows:

• Acti­vate the Mira­cast func­tion on the TV. On Sam­sung, you need to press Source on the remote con­trol and select Screen Mir­ror­ing from the menu. On LG, you need to press the Set­tings but­ton, select “Net­work” in the para­me­ters and acti­vate the Mira­cast func­tion.
• Go to your phone set­tings and find the “Wire­less Dis­play” option. You need to switch the slid­er by acti­vat­ing the option. The name of the TV in the local net­work appears on the dis­play.
• You need to click on the high­light­ed line to con­nect the devices.

In the TV set­tings, there should be an option to enable Mira­cast, if the tech­nol­o­gy is sup­port­ed. Source: help-wifi.com

After that, every­thing that hap­pens on the smart­phone will be broad­cast on the TV screen.

This man­u­al is suit­able for MIUI oper­at­ing sys­tems from Xiao­mi. To con­nect Sam­sung smart­phones or oth­er Android devices to the TV, you need to do oth­er manip­u­la­tions:

• Open phone set­tings.
• In the “Screen” sec­tion, find the “Broad­cast” item.
• Wait until the phone finds the desired TV — it should appear in the list.
• Pair devices.

How to connect phone to TV via USB

For this method, you will need a suit­able cable and a smart­phone run­ning on the Android oper­at­ing sys­tem. This will not work with Apple devices, but for them, we will talk about oth­er con­nec­tion meth­ods below. On the big screen, you can trans­fer mul­ti­me­dia con­tent — pho­tos, music, videos.

Pros:

• the phone is used as a flash dri­ve;
• fast USB con­nec­tion.

Minus­es:

• cable required;
• method only for android devices.

When con­nect­ed via USB, the gad­get acts as an exter­nal stor­age device. After con­nect­ing, a small menu appears on the smart­phone screen to select the mode. You need to select the item in which it is pro­posed to use the phone as a remov­able media.

You need to allow access to data on the phone, and then select USB from the TV menu. Illus­tra­tion: Niki­ta Sokolov, Photostore.Expert

The TV will detect the smart­phone as a USB flash dri­ve, and the user will be able to use the remote con­trol to open the files stored in mem­o­ry. This ele­men­tary method is con­ve­nient because no addi­tion­al equip­ment is need­ed to con­nect. Only a cable is required.

This method has dis­ad­van­tages:

• it does not work with Apple devices;
• some TVs do not play all types of files;
• you can not direct­ly trans­fer the pic­ture from the smart­phone dis­play to the big screen.

Ways to connect Apple devices to a TV

Final­ly, the only method left is to con­nect only Apple smart­phones to the TV. It is not avail­able for Android devices.

How to connect your smartphone to TV via AirPlay

This method is for Apple devices. With it, you can dupli­cate the screen of a smart­phone or tablet on a TV.

Pros:

• quick con­nec­tion with­out cables;

Minus­es:

• the TV must sup­port Air­Play;
• method only for Apple devices.

To do this, you need:

• Turn on the Air­Play func­tion on the TV. This is done dif­fer­ent­ly on dif­fer­ent device mod­els — you just need to find the desired item in the set­tings and acti­vate it.
• Make sure the TV and smart­phone are con­nect­ed to a com­mon home net­work. If the TV is con­nect­ed to the router, and the phone is con­nect­ed to the mobile Inter­net, you will not be able to con­nect them.
• Launch the Con­trol Cen­ter app on your iPhone and select the screen mir­ror­ing option.
• Select a TV, after which all the pic­ture from the phone dis­play will be broad­cast on the big screen.

Step by step instruc­tions to enable Air­Play on your smart­phone. Source: gadgetshelp.com

Some TVs require you to enter an Air­Play pass­code. It appears on the screen, after which it is entered on the Apple device.

How best to connect your phone to your TV

All the meth­ods of pair­ing described above have the right to exist. The sim­plest of them are Mira­cast and Chrome­cast, but not all TVs sup­port them.

If you are sat­is­fied with the cable con­nec­tion option, it will be eas­i­est to use HDMI. In this case, the pic­ture from the screen of the gad­get will be broad­cast on TV. It can be videos, games, pho­tos and so on.

The least con­ve­nient way with lim­it­ed func­tion­al­i­ty is a USB con­nec­tion. In this case, you can­not dupli­cate the image from the screen, but you can only open files from the phone’s mem­o­ry.