The popular AirDroid utility that blurs the line between your PC and Android phone is finally coming out of the cloud and onto your desktop, with standalone clients for Windows and Mac. The new programs, which are part of AirDroid 3's rollout on Wednesday, means you can get persistent notifications for messages, Android apps, and accept or dismiss phone calls on your desktop—no open browser tab necessary.

The new clients also come with a mirroring feature that lets you operate your Android device on your PC, as well as beefed-up security for file transfers.

AirDroid 3 promises a lot of improvements. During my time with the service, however, I found a few bugs still to be worked out before the standalone software becomes a true desktop powerhouse, on a par with the service's killer web app.

The impact on you at home: AirDroid has always been a great service for getting access to your phone’s SMS app and the file system right from your PC. The new desktop apps for Windows and Mac expand that ability to control your phone from your computer with new features and increased security.

One feature that did work well was the new mirroring feature that lets you control your Android device from your PC. For now, mirroring will only work with a few pre-certified phones the company has yet to announce, as well as rooted phones that can give AirDroid super user permissions. The bad news is AirDroid 3 currently does not support Android 5.0 Lollipop—sorry, bleeding edge Android fans.

As you can see from the image above, the remote connection to an Android device is a little low-res—or at least it was for me on my Nexus 7 running CyanogenMod.

Manipulating the device from the desktop worked just fine however. It was a little laggy, but many remote connection services have this problem.

If you’re wondering why you’d want a feature like this, imagine getting a notification for a new message in BlackBerry Messenger or Whatsapp.

Clicking the AirDroid 3 notification on your desktop automatically opens a mirroring connection to your phone if available. Once it’s established, you can answer your messages without bothering to grab your handset that could be across the room or in another part of the house or office.

Despite its current problems, it’s clear that once the kinks are worked out, AirDroid 3 is going to be a powerful way to interact with your phone from the desktop. Even though the focus with AirDroid 3 was on the new desktop apps, Sand Studio said the web app is still just as important and the company will “continue to invest heavily in it.”

To use the new version of AirDroid you’ll have to update your mobile devices to the latest version, which was also released Wednesday.

you should try out yourself to see, its actuallly free. when my phones screen turned off, i simply double tap the screen on my pc and the phone came on, chatting on bbm and whatsapp is quite fast.... i dont know why the resolution is low. i am still checking it out though.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2854681/airdroid-3-blurs-device-lines-even-further-with-new-pc-and-mac-clients-android-screen-mirroring.html

http://www.airdroid.com/