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Testing the HomePod Mini's New U1 Handoff Functionality

garethjs said:
Wicked271 it doesn’t airplay to the speakers.
It transfers the stream to the speakers and the speakers continue streaming it from the source itself

so as to how it is depends on how good your connection is your speakers to ur router
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Thanks! Does that mean it will stream the netflix show I’m watching in the apple tv?

also, is it possible to play music without the phone? Or connect the homepod mini to my laptop via the usb-c?

I watched the reviews and assumed that connection is very easy like airpods.
 
Not sure if anybody mentioned it yet but if you have a timer running on the Homepod mini, the time remaining will show on the phone when you approach it. That's neat...

homepodtimer.jpg
 
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GoldenOak said:
Not sure if anybody mentioned it yet but if you have a timer running on the Homepod mini, the time remaining will show on the phone when you approach it. That's neat...

View attachment 1720078
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Certainly handy feature. think it is a good feature and I do like it doesn't just connect and gives it a few secs incase you make a mistake for example.
 
ThatsME.mr said:
What did Apple do: They put effort into creating a new UI that has only a very limited use.
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It's not a new UI - it's actually the card you get if you go into Home.app and long-press the HomePod tile. But I agree with your point, it's by far from the best solution and is inconsistent with how other things are implemented in the iOS UX.
 
Don’t see all the fuss about this. I get the exact same feature between my iPhone X and HomePod. If I bring the iPhone X close enough to the HomePod it transfers whatever is playing back and forth. No need for U1 chip.

Is this an improvement from that?
 
haruhiko said:
It's too sensitive. I have a HomePod mini on my desk. Now my iPhone continuously vibrates and asks if I want to transfer the song to the HomePod. It's so annoying. I'm turning off the "feature".
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I’m not the only one who finds it annoying then. My set up is the same as yours. I want to have handoff without the alert/vibrate but i cant find a setting.

I hand off to my original HomePod with out all this stuff and nonsense going on.
 
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Apple_Robert said:
The hand off is still hit and miss for me when transferring from HomePod to iPhone. iPhone to HomePod seems to work much better.
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Wonder how you succeed at least sometimes. Hand off never ever works for me - it seems they just don’t recognize each other at all. Nothing changed when switching to the latest iPhone.
 
Yup I agree about the unwanted vibrations.

I have the mini on my sidetable next to my bed and I have the MagSafe charger next to
It

now it starts to vibrate as I place it down to charge because of how close it is to the mini.

in any case, it’s now slower to transfer music over to the mini. It was faster before they used the faster UI chip...

also transferring music back to the phone it now requires to confirm action on the phone. What is the point of this?
 
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Nuno Lopes said:
Don’t see all the fuss about this. I get the exact same feature between my iPhone X and HomePod. If I bring the iPhone X close enough to the HomePod it transfers whatever is playing back and forth. No need for U1 chip.

Is this an improvement from that?
Click to expand...
Well if you had a U1 device, it'd do the same thing but vibrate when it does it. I'm heading to the apple store now to get rid of this x.
 
D3ggy said:
But I think this turns off what is a useful function, its the alert and vibrate I want to get rid of.
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But so far this is the only way to prevent my phone from randomly vibrating (the alert also overrides what I’m working on) near the HomePod.
 
haruhiko said:
It's too sensitive. I have a HomePod mini on my desk. Now my iPhone continuously vibrates and asks if I want to transfer the song to the HomePod. It's so annoying. I'm turning off the "feature".
Click to expand...
This happens even if my phone isn’t playing any music.
Guess the guy who wrote the code for this doesn’t really use a HomePod mini at all.
 
I really don't understand the use case of UWB for Handoff. Bluetooth Low Energy has been perfectly sufficient for that use case, and is available on many more devices than UWB. You don't need the superior distance measurements of UWB here because the RSSI slope at close range is so dramatic, you can easily tell when a BLE device is getting in close proximity.

Same thing with car keys use case - NFC and/or BLE has that handled.

The only real use case for UWB that I have seen is potentially the tracker use case because of its superior directionality and distance measurements.
 
I turned Handoff off. When listening to audio on my iPhone, it would handoff every time I picked up my iPad. Crazy thing. I am just trying to figure out a situation where I would want this feature.
 
ThatsME.mr said:
[…]


That means my wife and me have to do this on one of our iPhones and have to be really focused while doing so so that we don't put the wrong music on the wrong HomePod. (This use case "play and control different music one different AirPlay devices is implemented usable).

I hoped that with 14.4 I would be able to hold my iPhone close to one of the HomePods (instead of clicking through the UI) to play music on it. That would fasten things a bit up. But: It is completely useless!

Important: I need to switch to the correct HomePod mini BEFORE I start music. Otherwise I would change the music on the device I controlled just before.

What happens:
1. I bring the iPhone close to the HPM and the new UI pops up. This works fairly good for me.
2. But: The new UI doesn't allow access to my music library. I just get a display of controls and couple of (usually irrelevant) suggestions.
3. There is a small button (pyramid with circles above) to access the Airplay controls. But instead of showing the already existing UI that one sees when clicking on this button on other screens which would allow to control multiple AirPlay devices, it brings up a reduced AirPlay screen. I didn't check out what this screen does, yet. But it definitely lacks a feature to control the device completely.

What did Apple do: They put effort into creating a new UI that has only a very limited use.
Click to expand...
I don't want to be one of those "you're holding it wrong" types but I think there are a few things you could do to minimize your frustrations.

1. I recommend you rename your HomePod minis (Jack's HomePod, Jill's HomePod) to make it easier to keep track of which is which.
2. I've found the faster way to make sure what I want is playing on the right device is to use AirPlay instead of Handoff. Pick what you want on your iPhone first, then AirPlay it to the preferred HomePod. I'm not sure how well "multi-airplay" works if you wanted to do two streams from your iPhone.
3. If you have any extra Apple devices, consider making those the "jukebox" iPhone/iPads

Cheers.
 
gene731 said:
Never have owned a HomePod but I do have two minis by our bed on a little computer stand set up as a stereo pair and those work nice for going to bed and just listening to a little low music before dozing off.
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I used to have a full-size HomePod near my bed for sleep music and meditation podcasts, but it had a very "boomy" sound. I switched it out for a HomePod mini and it's perfect.
 
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haruhiko said:
It's too sensitive. I have a HomePod mini on my desk. Now my iPhone continuously vibrates and asks if I want to transfer the song to the HomePod. It's so annoying. I'm turning off the "feature".
Click to expand...
Omg. I’m not the only one. Every freakin time. I like you HomePod mini but I hate you LOL.
 
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wallaby said:
I don't want to be one of those "you're holding it wrong" types but I think there are a few things you could do to minimize your frustrations.

1. I recommend you rename your HomePod minis (Jack's HomePod, Jill's HomePod) to make it easier to keep track of which is which.
2. I've found the faster way to make sure what I want is playing on the right device is to use AirPlay instead of Handoff. Pick what you want on your iPhone first, then AirPlay it to the preferred HomePod. I'm not sure how well "multi-airplay" works if you wanted to do two streams from your iPhone.
3. If you have any extra Apple devices, consider making those the "jukebox" iPhone/iPads

Cheers.
Click to expand...

That's all I did and it works for me exactly as you described. I just talked about that I have the feeling, that they don't think their use cases through anymore.

They offer a reduced UI (which I just learned already exists) instead of an already existing UI with more functionality.

I was hoping to be able to just enter the room if my son, hold the iPhone in the direction of the HPM and the iPhone switches to the correct HPM. As it is now, I have to click on the Airplay-Button, click "control other devices" and select the correct HPM (which of course have different names). One wrong click and my daughters music is off and a tantrum is on. :) (Which can be really trouble if you just have managed to work around this BS "up next" list and created a list the little princess might deem hearable.)

-------------------------------------
Test:
Try to set an the iPhone in this situation correctly:

"Ok, my child: It's already late. You can not hear this audio book until the end, you need to sleep. But you can hear the first 5 chapters and than you can hear your normal music to sleep." (The audio book is different every day, the music is the same. So fixed playlists are not an option.)

- You want to set the iPhone to play this, hand the stream over to the HPM and then leave the room.
- Please check, what really is on the up next list.
- Add-On: After chapter 4 the kid decides that he doesn't like the audio book and you would like to give him the first 3 chapters of another audio book and then his favorite music.

Keep calm.
 
GoldenOak said:
Not sure if anybody mentioned it yet but if you have a timer running on the Homepod mini, the time remaining will show on the phone when you approach it. That's neat...

View attachment 1720078
Click to expand...
Which brings me to my number one peeve with timers and multiple homepods, they are locked to a single homepod/pair and the rest of them are oblivious to any timers so if you ask the wrong one how much time is left you will get a "there are no timers set" message. So infuriating!
 
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