Originally announced at Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.’s developer’s conference in November 2014, Samsung Flow was released on the Google Play Store in beta yesterday. The app allows Samsung device users to switch seamlessly between devices like smartphones, tablets and smartwatches while continuing to use whichever app or content they are interacting with. Samsung Flow works in a similar way to Apple’s Handoff and Continuity features for iOS and OS X devices.

Just like Apple’s Handoff and Continuity only work with Apple devices, Samsung Flow also only works with Samsung hardware.

Samsung Flow is currently supported on the Galaxy S5, S6, and S6 Edge; Galaxy Alpha; Note 4 and Note Edge; and the Galaxy Tab S, although Samsung plans to roll our support Flow support to its televisions, laptops and wearable devices in the near future.

Samsung Flow in action

Unlike Apple’s Handoff and Continuity features, which take place seamlessly between devices, Samsung Flow requires some intervention from the user.

For example, if you are viewing a web page on a Galaxy S6 Edge and want to transfer – using the Transfer feature – it to your Galaxy Tab S, you have to press the Flow button and select the tablet as the device to move the web page to. This can be handy if you want to “defer” viewing until later, as shown in Samsung’s demo video below.

Flow works via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, meaning your devices have to be physically close to each other or on the same Wi-Fi network in order to switch between them.

More Flow features coming soon

In addition to Transfer and Defer, Samsung is working on additional features for Flow including Notify, for notifications across devices; Mirror, to let users open the same activity on more than one Samsung device, and Divide, to divide activities between Samsung devices.

Although limited to select Samsung devices, Flow uses native Android sharing functions and is not limited to Samsung-specific apps.

Samsung has opened Flow to external app developers so that they can include a Flow action directly in their apps.

The beta release of Samsung Flow is available for download on the Google Play Store.

Image courtesy Samsung