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Show HN: remote access to your Android phone with Shynk

shynk.com

14 pointssamkline8 comments

I really do love the idea behind these kinds of services - SMS from a desktop browser window? Awesome.

But I really don't want to pass all of my personal traffic off to a rndom new startup's server. How can you convince people to use this and trust you? Does this kind of thing rely on the serial over sharers to just connect their Google account up, and willingly pass off their private messaging?

Maybe I'm being overly critical, but this is precisely the kind of thing I would want to run myself, not give to someone else to run.

edit It seems I jumped the gun a little - their FAQ says that they explicitly don't store the messages on their servers, making them a dumb pipe to just send data. Still, my instinct is to wonder who else can see my messages :/

You make a good point. Especially when we rely on SMS as an out of band channel for two factor authentication.

But I really don't want to pass all of my personal traffic off to a random new startup's server

And rightly so. Just use EasySMS for the SMS thing (it runs entirely on your phone, no third party involved) and one of the six dozen Filesharing/Samba apps that run over Wifi without going through a remote party (personally I'm using the samba app with the red icon, don't recall the name right now).

Sorry @shynk, but your app is broken by design and the proper solutions have been available in the app-store for years.

Another option for SMS from your computer is to use Google Voice. If your with Sprint you can link your number and call and text from your browser.

How does this differ to something like Airdroid (www.airdroid.com)? It's not really clear to me and I can't run it at the moment.

Airdroid is almost perfect and the screenshots on the Play Store don't show your app in a good light.

That is the most common question I see (it's been asked on reddit a lot, too). It is similar. One of the main differences is that Shynk works over mobile networks, not just over wifi. This lets Shynk provide other functionality, too. e.g. sharing files publicly and connection tunneling.

As I continue working on Shynk, you'll see their feature sets diverge a little more. I'd like to implement some more features that take advantage of the fact that Shynk uses the public internet.

As for the screenshots: they're not too beautiful, but the app itself is a pretty minimal part. After you log in, you should be able to forget about the app and just use the website's interface.

Nice job, seems to work well. I love airdroid but it annoys me that I am constantly having to reconnect after I walk out of wifi range. If this gets around that issue then I'd swap.

One comment I had is that if I was to download this app on my device, the initial experience could be improved somewhat. The first screen is a login one and it says to go to your website, sign up and come back to the app. I did this on my mobile browser (chrome) and it was a bit clunky to sign up (I had the feedback/need help button hover over the form a bit). Perhaps instead of that, you could have a registration function right in the app? even if it was just a web view with a mobile optimized signup web page loaded. That way I don't have to leave the app.

Not a major thing but thought I'd offer you some feedback.

Thanks for the feedback!

It should get past the wifi range issue, as Shynk was designed with that in mind. It will automatically reconnect when it can (even if that means using 3G).

In-app registration is definitely something I've been planning on implementing, but it hadn't been asked about before, so I hadn't prioritized it.

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