NL2019557B1 - Handheld or wearable device with screen mirroring application, method of mirroring a selected part of a display, network device and computer program product. - Google Patents

Abstract

A handheld or wearable data processing device with a black-box, proprietary operating system has a proprietary, closed platform, mirroring module capable of displaying a selected part of the graphical user interface to a display of a compatible network device, but only via a proprietary connection in accordance with a proprietary communication protocol to network devices preapproved by the manufacturer of the operating system and provided with a compatible proprietary communication module. A screen mirroring application is arranged to run on the operating system, for establishing a screen mirroring connection over the wireless communication channel in accordance with a nonproprietary communication protocol to an external mirroring display ofa selected device of a node in the local area network selected by the user and displaying a mirrored part of the graphical user interface to the mirroring display.

Description

Title : Handheld or wearable device with screen mirroring application, method of mirroring a selected part of a display, network device and computer program product.

Description

Field of the invention

The present invention relates to handheld or wearable devices with screen mirroring capabilities, as well as methods of mirroring a selected part of a display, network devices and computer program products with screen mirroring applications.

Background of the invention

It is known to mirror displays of portable data processing devices, such as e.g. laptop computers, onto another display, such as a television. In such mirroring, the display (or a selected part thereof) of the device is also displayed on the other display in a time-synchronized manner, such that an event displayed on the device is, optionally with some delay, also displayed on the other display without any change. However, the current solutions require either a wired connection, such as connecting a laptop to a display with an HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) cable, or a dedicated adaptor specific for screen mirroring, such as an adaptor compliant with the Miracast standard, when connecting wirelessly.

Depending on the specific device and display, such an adaptor can be required for the display or both the device and the display. For example, Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Washington, United States of America sells handheld mobile communication devices under the brand “Lumia” and provided with the operation system named “Windows 10” for which Microsoft Corporation sells a wireless adaptor compliant with the Miracast standard that can be plugged into an HDMI port of e.g. a television or computer monitor to wirelessly mirror the display of the handheld mobile communication device. However, in addition to the need for an adaptor, this adaptor requires separate powering through a supply compliant with the Universal Serial Bus standard which, in addition to requiring a second connector, is not available at all displays.

Thus, although display or screen mirroring solutions exist for portable data processing devices, they are cumbersome because they require additional hardware.

It is known for handheld data processing devices with a touch-screen, such as mobile communication devices, for example from the handheld mobile communication devices and mediaplayers sold by Apple Inc of Cupertino, California, United States of America under the brand-names “iPad”, “iPhone” and “iPod”, to mirror displays via a black-box, proprietary solution named “AirPlay Mirroring” which runs on the proprietary, black-box operating system named ‘iOS” that comes preinstalled with the devices.

However, because of its proprietary, closed-platform nature, this solution requires network devices that are pre-approved by the manufacturer of the handheld mobile devices and that either have a compatible communication module pre-installed thereon. Currently, the only network device of this type available on the market is the digital media player called “Apple TV" sold by Apple Inc.

This player can be connected to a display via a wired connection and establish a wireless AirPlay Mirroring connection to the handheld device to stream media to the display over a wireless local area network channel. However, to mirror the display of the handheld device on e.g. a television a user of the handheld data processing devices is thus required to use this specific player in combination with the television or other remote display.

Summary of the invention

The present invention provides handheld or wearable devices, methods, network devices and computer program products as described in the accompanying claims.

Specific embodiments of the invention are set forth in the dependent claims.

These and other aspects of the invention will be apparent from and elucidated with reference to the embodiments described hereinafter.

Brief description of the drawings

Further details, aspects and embodiments of the invention will be described, by way of example only, with reference to the drawings. In the drawings, like reference numbers are used to identify like or functionally similar elements. Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. FIG. 1 schematically shows a perspective view of an example of a handheld device. FIG. 2 schematically shows a block diagram of electronics suitable for the example of FIG. 1. FIG. 3 schematically shows a block diagram of software suitable for the example of FIG. 1. FIG. 4 schematically shows a block diagram of a screen mirroring application suitable for the example of FIG. 3. FIG. 5 schematically shows an example of a handheld device, such as of FIG. 1, connected to a local area network and a cellular communication network. FIG. 6 shows a communication diagram of a communication flow suitable for the example of FIG. 1. FIG. 7 shows a block diagram of functional blocks suitable to mirror a display in the examples of FIGs. 1-3.

Detailed description of the preferred embodiments

In the following, details will not be explained in any greater extent than that considered necessary for the understanding and appreciation of the underlying concepts of the present invention and in order not to obfuscate or distract from the teachings of the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 1, as an example a handheld or wearable data processing device 1 is shown.

The device 1 comprises a housing 10 inside which an integrated circuit processor 11 is present, such as shown in FIG. 2. The integrated circuit processor 11 is arranged to execute instructions of computer programs, such as shown in FIG. 3. The device 1 further has a display 12 connected to the integrated circuit processor 11. At the display 12 a graphical user interface (GUI) 18 can be displayed to a user. In this example the display 11 is a touch screen enabled display which allow a user to interact with the computer programs by bringing fingers in contact with the display, e.g. by touching the display, but it will be apparent that the user may interact with the computer programs in another manner, for example by voice control or optical gesture recognition.

The device 1 further has a wireless local area network transceiver 13 connected to the integrated circuit processor 11. The transceiver 13 can establish a wireless communication channel 14 to a local area network 30, such as an IEEE 802.11 communication channel, via the antenna in the device 1 connected to the transceiver 13, as illustrated in FIG. 5.

The block diagram of FIG. 2 shows as an integrated circuit processor, which is connected to the line-up of transceiver 13 and the antenna, as well as to a cellular communication line-up, which in this example comprises a transceiver 15 with an antenna. The cellular network communication transceiver 15 allows to establish a cellular communication channel to a cellular network 40, as illustrated in FIG. 5, which in this example is assumed to be a 4G network but it will be apparent that other types of networks may be used. In this example, the integrated circuit processor 11 is an application processor APU and the line-up comprises a baseband processor (BBP) 16 arranged to run a separate operating system, in this example a real-time operating system (RTOS) 22, for controlling the cellular network communication via the transceiver 15. The cellular communication channel allows to communicate data directly to the cellular network 40. Depending on the type of hand-held device, in addition thereto the hardware and software may allow to place voice and/or video calls, e.g. via a channel separate from the data channel, such as a circuit switched channel or a packet switched channel, for example a Voice over Long-Term Evolution (VoLTE) compliant channel in the latter case.

The device 1 further has a memory (M) 17 connected to the integrated circuit processor 11, in which memory data is stored which represents computer programs executable by the integrated circuit processor. The memory 17 can for example be a solid-state non-volatile memory, such as flash memory. The memory 17 may e.g. be auxiliary memory and the APU be provided with primary non-volatile memory in which e.g. firmware is stored. FIG. 2 further shows that the processor 11 is connected to the GUI 18 to output at the display information to the user and, e.g. via the tactile input presented by the touch-screen capabilities, receive input from the user.

Referring to now FIG. 3, the device 1 has a black-box, proprietary operating system (OS) 20 installed thereon. The operating system (OS) manages the sharing of the resources of the handheld device and provides applications running on the OS with an interface used to access those resources. The operating system processes system data and user input, and responds by allocating and managing tasks and internal system resources as a service to users and applications of the device. In this respect the term “black-box” is referred to in the sense that, although from the inputs and outputs of the operating system the internal workings may be inferred, actual knowledge thereof is absent. It will be apparent that some parts of the operating system may be public, such as interfaces of the operating system.

The OS 20 may for example be a closed-source software of which the source-code is not published. The operating system 20 can e.g. be pre-installed during manufacturing of the device 1 or be installed as an upgrade of a pre-installed operating system. The device 1 maybe closed-system where the integrated circuit processor 11 is inhibited from running any operating system other than the proprietary operating system, e.g. by requiring a certain certificate or signature to be included in the code of the operating system 20, as is believed to be the case for the operating system of handheld devices manufactured by Apple Inc.. (Parts of) the operating system 20 can for example be installed by hardwiring the device 1 during manufacturing, storing parts in firmware of the APU 11 and/or storing code thereof in the memory 17. The device 1 may be a closed-platform where the proprietary operating system restricts installing and/or running applications to pre-approved applications which are either pre-installed or installed from a pre-set remote digital distribution service, such as the “App Store”, which is a digital distribution platform, developed and maintained by Apple Inc., for applications running on its black-box, proprietary iOS operating system.

The black-box operating system 20 has a proprietary closed platform mirroring module (MM) 21 capable of displaying a selected part of the graphical user interface to a display of a compatible network device, but only via a proprietary connection in accordance with a proprietary communication protocol to network devices pre-approved by the manufacturer of the operating system and provided with a compatible proprietary communication module. An example of such a module is the “AirPlay Mirroring” function in iOS as explained in the section “BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION”, which in addition to the constraints described is limited to mirroring the entire display.

In the example of FIG. 3, applications (A1,A2,SMA) 23-25 are shown which can run on the operating system 20. The operating system has an application programming interface API 26 via which built-in functions of the operating system can be controlled and used by the applications 23-25. The operating system 20 and applications are shown to be running on the APU 11. The operating system 20 and the applications may, in addition to APU 11, use other resources of the device, and for example send or receive via RTOS 22 and BBP 16 data to the cellular network or send or receive via transceiver 13 data to the local area network. In this example, as illustrated with applications A1 24 and A2 25, the operating system can run multiple applications. These can for example be run in parallel and displayed simultaneously in the GUI, e.g. in separate windows.

Screen mirroring application SMA 23 is arranged to run on the operating system 20. SMA 23 can establish a screen mirroring connection over the wireless communication channel 14 in accordance with a non-proprietary communication protocol to a, external, mirroring display 32 of a selected device 31 in the local area network 30 selected by the user and display a mirrored part of the graphical user interface to the mirroring display. Thus, despite the choice of the mirroring device via the black-box operating system itself being limited to those authorized by the manufacturer, the screen mirroring application 23 allows a user a wider choice which is not subject to the build-in restrictions of the operating system.

The non-proprietary protocol can for example be Universal Plug and Play. This allows a wide variety of devices to be used since this is an open and commonplace protocol. The screen mirroring connection can e.g. be compliant or compatible with the Digital Living Network Alliance Guidelines (DLNA). This allows a wide variety of devices to be used, since this is an open standard and a large variety of displays is currently available that have DLNA compliant network interfaces implemented.

The DLNA specification defines three basic types of roles for devices in the DLNA network: a digital media Tenderer role, a digital media controller (control point) role and a digital media server role. A device having a digital media renderer role may be configured to show to the user the content provided to it by other devices. A device having the digital media server role is a component capable of storing and sourcing media. Devices configured as digital media controllers (control point role) can initiate activities as a third-party controller, for example, start the display of a media from a digital media server device on a digital media renderer device, i.e. digital media controllers are configured to control how and where to render content that is provided by the server. A device can assume one or more roles. For example, a device can be configured as both the server and the control point. The mirroring display 32 may thus be a DLNA media render and the SMA may be implemented as a DLNA controller and server. This allows a wide variety of displays to be used because a large variety of displays is currently commercially available that have DLNA media renders implemented. FIG. 4 shows an example of an architecture of a screen mirroring application suitable for this example. As shown, the SMA 23 comprises multicast code (URRC) 220 which, when executed, makes the device 1 multicast in the local area network a request for unicast responses to the request from nodes in the local area network. This allows the detection of nodes without prior knowledge and hence independent of the configuration of the device 1 during manufacturing or pre-set when installing the black-box proprietary operating system 20.

The SMA 23 further comprises selection code (SC) 221 which, when executed, presents at the user interface in response to receiving unicast responses a list of suitable devices to a user. The SC 221 selects a selected device from the list in response to an input from a user. In this example, SC 221 is connected to a GUI API (application programming interface) 225 via which e.g. GUI functions built in the operating system 20 can be addressed and used.

The SMA 23 further comprises control code (CC) 222 which, when executed, controls the mirroring display of the selected device to display at least the mirrored part of the graphical user interface 18. It will be apparent that the mirrored part may be the entire display or a smaller part thereof and that, depending on the specific implementation, the selected part may e.g. be preselected in the SMA (such as pre-set to mirroring the entire display) or the SMA contain code to allow a user to select a desired part, e.g. by presenting at the GUI a control for selecting the desired part, a For example, the entire display may be mirrored or a smaller selection thereof, (e.g. a specific window of an application) depending on the specific implementation. For instance, each currently running application can be assigned a resizable or non-resizable, e.g. rectangular shaped surface of the display to present its graphical user interface to the user; these windows may overlap each other or not be allowed to overlap. The operating system may thus present at the GUI each currently running application A1 ,A2 SMA in its own, separate, window (e.g. as a split-screen where the display is divided in into non-movable adjacent parts, typically two or four rectangular areas) and only one or more selected windows may be mirrored. However, it is likewise possible to mirror the entire display 12 of the device 1.

The selection code may determine which devices are suitable for mirroring in any manner suitable for the specific implementation. For example, the selection code can be arranged to present suitable devices identified from configuration information received from the node as allowing displaying streamed media over the wireless connection. For instance, the configuration information may be included in the unicast response, e.g. as universal plug-and play profiles, and contain a description of the node and the services it offers.

In the example of FIG. 4, the screen mirroring application 22 comprises configuration code (CONFC) 223 which, when executed, configures a media streaming connection to the selected display, based on the configuration information. For instance, the CONFC 223 can request the selected device to display streamed media in a predetermined format from a predetermined location. The control code 222 may then control the selected display to display the streamed media via LAN interface 224, which in this example is a DLNA interface compliant with the DLNA protocol specification. FIG. 5 shows the handheld device connected to a cellular communication network 40, in this example to a base-station via a wireless channel which connects the handheld device to the basestation. The handheld device is connected to LAN 30 via the wireless communication channel 14, and more specific to a router 33 to which network node 31 with the mirroring display 32 is connected via another wireless communication channel 14, but this may of course be a wired channel as well. As shown, the SMA 23 has established the screen mirroring connection to the mirroring display 32 and the GUI of the device 1 is mirrored at the display 32. FIG. 7 shows a block diagram of a suitable media processing architecture. In this example, the operating system 20 has a built in function to send images, e.g. still or video, of the GU118 which can be accessed via the API 26 by the SMA 23 and the SMA 23 receives these images, as well as audio synchronized with the GUI (e.g. a beep or other sound). The example shown in FIG. 7 comprises audio streaming code for streaming audio to an audio output of the selected device and video streaming code for streaming video. More specific, the example of an SMA 23 shown comprises an audio coding path with an audio encoder AAC and a video coding path with a video encoder H264. In this example, the audio coder can encode audio in accordance with the advanced audio coding protocol, but it will be apparent that other coding protocols may be suitable. In this example, the video coder can encode video in accordance with the H264 protocol, but it will be apparent that other coding protocols may be suitable.

The encoded audio and video streams are merged in a single stream, in this example by merging code MP2 TS which generates a transport stream in a container or wrapper format. This allows the use a generic media players and obviates the need for a dedicated application at the mirroring display. The transport stream can for example be an MPEG 2 transport stream. HTTP code sends this stream via the hypertext transfer protocol (http) to the selected device 31.

The example of FIG. 7 further comprises a sensor (LC) for measuring a latency of the streaming connection, and the screen mirroring application comprises latency control code for controlling said latency by modulating a frame rate of the media stream as a function of latency in accordance with a predetermined relationship. Thus, in case of the latency exceeding a predetermined threshold, frames may be dropped. The percentage of dropped may increase with latency. For instance in case of a high latency, for example 10 seconds, more frames maybe dropped than if the latency is closer to the threshold, e.g. 3 seconds. The sensor may for example be implemented as sensor code which e.g. time-stamps frames when send with a transmission time and requests from the selected device 31 to send time-information back which indicates a point in time the frame was received or displayed, and determines from the difference between transmission time and receiving or display time the latency.

The latency control code may additionally or alternatively to controlling latency during streaming, and without or without a latency sensor being present, control an initial delay of displaying. For example, the latency control code may control the amount of data at a data buffer of the mirroring display. The latency control code may for example initially send a burst of meaningless (i.e. not screen mirroring) data which almost fills the buffer without triggering the displaying, such that when the first screen mirroring data is received, the display starts displaying the screen mirroring stream. This obviates the need to wait until at the handheld device side the large amount of screen mirroring data has been obtained, and sent to the empty buffer, required to sufficiently fill the empty buffer to trigger displaying. Accordingly, the time-lag between starting screen mirroring at the handheld device and actually displaying at the mirroring display can be reduced. Depending on the type of mirroring display and buffer size, such a time-lag can typically be up to a couple of seconds and hence noticeable to a user. For example, initially an amount of meaningless data which partially fills the buffer but not exceeding a displaying threshold, e.g. up to that threshold, and the first screen mirroring data may result in the threshold being exceeded and the displaying triggered. FIG. 6 shows a communication diagram of a method of mirroring a selected part of a display of a portable data processing device. Such a method may comprise running the screen mirroring application on a handheld or wearable processing device. In FIG. 6 the left-hand side is performed by the handheld device and the right hand side by nodes external thereto in the local area network.

In the shown example, initially at 50 a request for unicast responses to the request from nodes in the network is multi-casted or broadcasted in the local area network. The request can, as indicated, e.g. be a SSDP (Simple Service Discovery Protocol) multicast request send by the handheld device to nodes in the local area network. In response to the request, nodes in the network may respond by unicasting a response RES, see 51. For example, the request may contain an identification of the type of device being searched by the handheld device, and only nodes corresponding to the specified type may respond.

At the GUI of the handheld device, a list of suitable devices may be presented to the user in response to receiving unicast responses and a device selected from the list in response to a selecting input from the user. This selection may be stored in non-volatile memory and be re-used a next time the user wants to mirror the screen (e.g. by presenting to the user a list of preconfigured connections when the application 22 is started). The handheld device 1 may then notify, at 52, the selected device of the selection and send, at 53, a source location of the media stream in the form of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) to the selected mirroring display and a command, PL-CMD, to the selected display to play the media stream, at 54. If the mirroring display is successful in playing the medial stream, the display issues a confirmation, SUC, to the handheld device 1 that this is successful, at 55. The mirroring display can then play the media stream which records the display of the handheld device by sending a request “G-STR” at 56, in response to which the handheld device at 57 streams STR the recorded display and the mirroring display plays the stream PL-STR at 58. This requesting, sending and playing the stream is then repeated in a loop until the display mirroring is terminated.

The invention may also be implemented in a computer program for running on a computer system, at least including code portions for performing steps of a method according to the invention when run on a programmable apparatus, such as a computer system or enabling a programmable apparatus to perform functions of a device or system according to the invention. The screen mirroring application may for example be implemented a computer program product, comprising code portions representing a screen mirroring application for a handheld or wearable data processing device, such as in this example that of FIG. 1.

Such an computer program product can be readily executable by the device or installable thereon. FIG. 5 shows for instance a network device 41 with a memory in which data representing a screen mirroring application is stored in a form installable on a handheld orwearable data processing device to transform the handheld or wearable data processing device into e.g. the example of FIG. 1.

The computer programs can be stored as data representing the programs on a data carrier. The data carrier on which data representing the computer programs can be stored, can be a tangible and non-transitory, computer readable storage medium, or be a computer readable transmission medium via which data is transmitted to a computer system, i.e. an electronic device which is capable of receiving data and of performing a sequence of operations in accordance with a predetermined but variable set of procedural instructions (computer program) to produce a result in the form of digital or analogue signals.

Suitable computer readable media may include, for example non-volatile memory storage media, including semiconductor-based memory units such as FLASH memory or volatile storage media including registers, buffers orcaches, main memory, RAM, etc.; and data transmission media including wireless orwired data transmission media, just to name a few. A computer readable storage medium may be any type of computer-readable media other than a transitory, propagating signal. All or some of the data may for instance be provided on computer readable media permanently, removably or remotely coupled to the data processing device 1.

In the foregoing specification, the invention has been described with reference to specific examples of embodiments of the invention. It will, however, be evident that various modifications and changes may be made therein without departing from the broader scope of the invention as set forth in the appended claims and that the claims are not limited to the specific examples described.

For instance, the handheld orwearable data processing device can e.g. be a mobile phone (i.e. a handheld data processing device that allows to make calls via a separate voice channel of a cellular communication system) like those sold under the name “iPhone” by Apple Inc, ora handheld computing device like a tablet (like those sold under the name “iPad” by Apple Inc) or a handheld media player like those sold under the name “iPod Touch” by Apple Inc. The handheld or wearable device can be connectable or not to a cellular communication network, and e.g. not have the hardware and/or software required to make calls via the voice channel of that network (or have this disabled by the manufacturer without access to the settings for a user). In this respect, the term “connectable” means a direct connection and not one via e.g. a local area network. The handheld data processing device can e.g. comprise a touchscreen-enabled display on which a virtual keyboard can be displayed which is controlled by tactile input from the user, and can be without a physical keyboard or at least one that can be operated without use of a physical keyboard being required.

Likewise, the computer programs can be any suitable type of computer program. The computer program may for instance include one or more of: a subroutine, a function, a procedure, an object method, an object implementation, an executable application, an applet, a servlet, a source code, an object code, a shared library/dynamic load library and/or other sequence of instructions designed for execution on a handheld or wearable data processing device. The computer program may be stored internally in the device on a computer readable storage medium or transmitted to the device 1 via a computer readable transmission medium. All or some of the computer program may be provided on computer readable media permanently, removably or remotely coupled to an information processing system. The computer readable media may include, for example and without limitation, any number of the following: magnetic storage media including disk and tape storage media; optical storage media such as compact disk media (e.g., CD ROM, CD R, etc.) and digital video disk storage media; nonvolatile memory storage media including semiconductor-based memory units such as FLASH memory, EEPROM, EPROM, ROM; ferromagnetic digital memories; MRAM; volatile storage media including registers, buffers or caches, main memory, RAM, etc.; and data transmission media including computer networks, point-to-point telecommunication equipment, and carrier wave transmission media, just to name a few.

Also, where in this application the processing of data or information is described, this may be e.g. performed by a suitable electronic and/or phototonic device which receives signals, processes the signals through more or less complex (integrated) circuitry (e.g. electronic and/or phototonic), and outputs processed signals, and this shall not be interpreted as pertaining purely to mental acts or to the performance mathematical algorithms.

Likewise, the connections as discussed herein may be any type of connection suitable to transfer signals from or to the respective nodes, units or devices, for example via intermediate devices. Accordingly, unless implied or stated otherwise, the connections may for example be direct connections or indirect connections. The connections may be illustrated or described in reference to being a single connection, a plurality of connections, unidirectional connections, or bidirectional connections. However, different embodiments may vary the implementation of the connections. For example, separate unidirectional connections may be used rather than bidirectional connections and vice versa. Also, plurality of connections may be replaced with a single connections that transfers multiple signals serially or in a time multiplexed manner. Likewise, single connections carrying multiple signals may be separated out into various different connections carrying subsets of these signals. Therefore, many options exist for transferring signals.

However, other modifications, variations and alternatives are also possible. The specifications and drawings are, accordingly, to be regarded in an illustrative rather than in a restrictive sense.

In the claims, any reference signs placed between parentheses shall not be construed as limiting the claim. The word 'comprising’ does not exclude the presence of other elements or steps then those listed in a claim. Furthermore, the terms “a” or “an,” as used herein, are defined as one or more than one.

Also, the use of introductory phrases such as “at least one” and “one or more” in the claims should not be construed to imply that the introduction of another claim element by the indefinite articles "a" or "an" limits any particular claim containing such introduced claim element to inventions containing only one such element, even when the same claim includes the introductory phrases "one or more" or "at least one" and indefinite articles such as "a" or "an." The same holds true for the use of definite articles. Unless stated otherwise, terms such as “first" and “second” are used to arbitrarily distinguish between the elements such terms describe. Thus, these terms are not necessarily intended to indicate temporal or other prioritization of such elements The mere fact that certain measures are recited in mutually different claims does not indicate that a combination of these measures cannot be used to advantage.

Claims (16)

A handheld or body-carrying data processing device, comprising: a housing in which an integrated circuit processor is provided, adapted to execute instructions from at least two computer programs; a display connected to the integrated circuit processor, on which a graphical user interface can be displayed to a human user to present information about the computer programs to the user; a user input connected to the integrated circuit processor, to record input from a user to allow user interaction with the computer programs; a wireless local area network transceiver connected to the integrated circuit processor, for establishing a wireless communication channel with a local area network; the computer programs comprising: a black-box, proprietary operating system with a proprietary, closed platform, mirroring module capable of displaying a selected part of the graphical user interface on a screen of a compatible network device, but only via a proprietary connection according to a proprietary communication protocol with network devices approved in advance by the manufacturer of the operating system and provided with a compatible proprietary communication module; a screen mirror module adapted to run on the control system for establishing a screen mirror connection over the wireless communication channel in accordance with a non-proprietary communication protocol to an external mirror screen of a selected device of a node in the local area network selected by the user, and displaying a mirrored portion of the graphical user interface on the mirroring display. A device as set forth in claim 1, wherein the screen mirror module comprises: unicast reply request code to multi-or broadcast a request in the local area network to unicast reply to the request of nodes in the network; selection code for presenting to a user on the user interface a list of suitable devices in response to received unicast responses and selecting from the list of a selected device in response to a selection input from the user; and control code to control the mirrored display of the selected device to display the mirrored portion of the graphical user interface. A device as set forth in claim 2, wherein the selection code is adapted to present suitable devices identified from configuration information received from the selected node as allowing streaming media and the screen mirror module comprising: configuration code for configuration information configuring a media streaming connection to the selected display; and the control code is adapted to control the selected display to display the streamed media. An apparatus as set forth in claim 3, comprising a delay sensor for measuring a delay of the streaming connection, and the screen mirror module comprising delay control code for controlling the delay by modulating a frame rate of the media stream as a function of delay. A device as set forth in any one of the preceding claims, wherein the screen mirror module comprises audio streaming code, for streaming audio to an audio output of the selected device. A device as set forth in any one of the preceding claims, wherein the screen mirror module is conforming or compatible with the Digital Living Network Alliance Guidelines. A device as set forth in any one of the preceding claims, wherein the non-proprietary protocol is Universal Plug and Play. A device as set forth in any one of the preceding claims, wherein the control system is pre-installed during manufacture of the device and the screen mirror module is installed by a user. A device as claimed in claim 8, wherein the proprietary operating system limits installation and / or execution of applications to pre-approved applications that are either pre-installed or installed from a preset remote digital distribution service. A device as claimed in claims 8 or 9, wherein the integrated circuit processor is blocked from running a control system other than the proprietary control system. An apparatus as set forth in any one of the preceding claims, further comprising a cellular network communication transceiver for establishing a mobile communication connection with a cellular network. A device as set forth in claim 11, wherein the integrated circuit processor is an application processor and the device comprises a baseband processor configured to run a real-time operating system for controlling cellular network communication. An apparatus as claimed in any one of the preceding claims, comprising a memory connected to the integrated circuit processor, in which memory data are stored which represent computer programs executable by the integrated circuit processor. A method of mirroring a selected portion of a display of a portable data processing device, comprising rotating the screen mirror module on a handheld or body portable data processing device as set forth in one or more of the preceding claims. A computer program product comprising code parts that represent a screen mirror module for a handheld or body-carrying data processing device as laid down in one or more of claims 1-13. A network device with a memory in which is stored data representing a screen mirror module in a handheld or body-portable data processing installable form to transform the handheld or body-portable data processing device into one as set forth in one or more of claims 1-13, the network device being connectable to the handheld or body-carrying data processing device.