Smartphones and TVs are very ubiquitous these days. Simply put, they are everywhere. One of the many things that smartphones can do is view multimedia content (especially videos). Now whilst smartphones can do this rather very well, they have rather small screens and TVs provide a better viewing experience. As a result, if you are reading this, you are probably looking for how to connect your smartphone to any television.
Connecting your smartphone to your TV could be as simple as pushing a single button on your smartphone (and TV) or it could be a rather long process of several connections. This would be highly dependent on the type of television that you are attempting to connect your smartphone to.
Why you should connect your phone to your TV
- Because viewing content on a bigger screen is (and will always) be better.
- The sound will also trump anything that a smartphone can offer.
- Viewing content on a larger screen is easier on the eyes.
- You don’t have to hold your TV up as you would your phone etc.
Learning about TVs
For the sake of this article, we are going to divide TVs into three groups:
- Old CRT (cathode ray tube) TVs
- Non-smart Flat Screen (Plasma/LCD) TVs
- Smart Flat Screen (LCD/OLED) TVs
Before you begin
Before you even attempt to learn about how to connect your smartphone to any television, you must understand the different types of TVs still around today. This will go a long way in helping you do this successfully.
CRT TVs are commonly what is referred to as “box TVs”. This is because they are usually built to look like boxes. Now while these TVs are no longer in production, a lot of them still exist and more importantly, still work. Note that these TVs lack the HDMI and wireless connections that we enjoy today. Thus it will take a much longer process to connect your smartphone to them.
On the flip side, modern televisions all have rectangular flat-panel screens. The non-smart Flat Screen TVs (LCD, Plasmas, and OLEDs) all have HDMI ports whilst smart Flat Screens have both HDMI and wireless connectivity (Wi-Fi).
How to connect your smartphone to CRT TVs
To connect a smartphone to these types of TVs, you have to do a 2 phase connection:
- Phase 1: wired
- Phase 2: Wireless
Phase 1 requires AV cables, an HDMI to AV converter, and a streaming dongle. For the streaming dongles, I usually favor Miracast or Anycast dongles as they are cheaper. You can easily get all of these three offline (your local stores) or online (Amazon, eBay, etc.).
- Step 1: Plug one end of the AV cable into the TV and the other end into the HDMI to AV converter.
- Step 2: Plug the streaming dongle into the HDMI port of the HDMI to AV converter and the USB A part into any power source.
Phase 2 is very straightforward. Tune the TV into AV mode, if you did the connections correctly, the streaming dongle’s UI should be on the TV. All you’ll have to do is use the cast function on your phone to search for and connect to the streaming dongle. That’s all there is to it.
How to connect your smartphone to Non-smart Flat Screen TVs
These TVs are even easier to connect to because they have HDMI ports so all you need to have handy is a streaming dongle. Simply plug the streaming dongle into an HDMI port on the TV and plug the USB A part into a nearby USB port for power.
If you did this correctly, the streaming dongle’s UI should be showing up on the TV. All you have to do now is use the cast function on your phone to connect to your TV and that’s it.
Smart Flat Screen TVs
Smart TVs come with inbuilt WI-FI connectivity so you don’t need external streaming dongles. All you have to do is locate the built-in cast settings on your TV or use a third-party app. If you can find this setting and turn it on, it’s smooth sailing from there on. You can either cast on an app-by-app basis or use the cast function to screen mirror your entire device.
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