Set up and use Group Play on the Samsung Galaxy S4 (pictures)
Samsung's Group Play feature can turn a room full of Galaxy S4 phones into a mini gaming competition or a silent disco. Here's how.
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Jessica Dolcourt is a passionate content strategist and veteran leader of CNET coverage. As Senior Director of Commerce & Content Operations, she leads a number of teams, including Commerce, How-To and Performance Optimization. Her CNET career began in 2006, testing desktop and mobile software for Download.com and CNET, including the first iPhone and Android apps and operating systems. She continued to review, report on and write a wide range of commentary and analysis on all things phones, with an emphasis on iPhone and Samsung. Jessica was one of the first people in the world to test, review and report on foldable phones and 5G wireless speeds.
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Group Play is one of the most social new features on Samsung's Galaxy S4 smartphone. Open it up and it essentially turns a group of nearby Galaxy S4 phones into a network.
What can you do on that network? Share photos and documents, blast music across devices like an integrated speaker system, and host a multiplayer game, like a poker tournament.
Whomever starts the group picks the password, and it can be as simple or complex as you'd like. Since Group Play uses Wi-Fi Direct to link the phones, you'll be near enough to just tell others what the password is to join the group.
Password control makes it easy for more than one distinct group to share the same space without interfering.
A simple list tells you what you can share from the master phone to the rest, and also helps you access the music tracks, pictures, documents, or games.
You'll be able to share photos and documents with Galaxy S3 phones, but only Galaxy S4 phones work with gaming and music sharing.
After picking the type of content you want to broadcast, you'll select the actual item to share. In this scenario, it's a photo from the gallery. And that's it!
Samsung has added some really neat visualizations when sharing music across S4 phones. The colorful rings pulse with sound and light, changing hues as the song plays.
The group leader, the one who created the wireless access point, has total control over the volume and placement of each phone, which is, in effect, a speaker.
When multiple people join a group, the leader has exclusive control over the sliding dials for the master volume and for each participant. As a node in a larger network, as long as you're part of a group, your speaker volume isn't your own.
This is what gaming looks like when a bunch of people play together using Group Play. You all see the same moves on your Galaxy S4 screen, which makes for a pretty fun little diversion if you and your friends all happen to have the same phone.
The GS4 requirement is a limiting factor, to be sure, but knowing Samsung, there's a good chance it will migrate Group Play capabilities to its cadre of mobile devices, like the next Galaxy Note smartphones and tablets for a start.
