What is the difference between mirroring and casting?
Mirroring copies your entire phone screen to the TV in real time, and your phone has to keep encoding and transmitting the whole time. Casting hands the TV a link and lets the TV stream the content itself, so your phone becomes a remote control. Casting gives better quality and lets you use your phone for something else; mirroring shows everything, including apps that have no cast support.
The four protocols
Miracast
A Wi-Fi Alliance standard that creates a direct device-to-device link, effectively a wireless HDMI cable. It does not route through your router, which is why walls and distance affect it more than normal Wi-Fi does.
The important part: Google removed Miracast from Android in version 6.0 in 2015 and the code has been unmaintained since Android 9. Manufacturers who wanted it had to keep their own implementation. Samsung did, and calls it Smart View. Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and Huawei did. Google, and more recently Motorola and OnePlus, did not.
Most TV brands do accept Miracast: Samsung, LG, Roku, Fire TV, and Hisense VIDAA models under the name Anyview Cast.
Google Cast (Chromecast built-in)
Google’s own protocol. It routes through your Wi-Fi network rather than making a direct link, and it supports both true casting and full-screen mirroring from Android.
Every modern Android phone with Google services supports Google Cast. On the TV side it is far less universal: Google TV, Android TV, Vizio SmartCast and Chromecast dongles have it. Samsung, LG, Roku and Fire TV do not.
AirPlay 2
Apple’s protocol. Supported by iPhones and iPads, and by many Samsung TVs from 2018 and LG TVs from 2019. It is not available to Android phones, so it does not help here.
DLNA
The oldest of the four, and not mirroring at all. It pushes individual files - a photo, a video, a music track - to a TV that can play them. When a mirroring app appears to work on hardware that should not support mirroring, DLNA is usually what is actually happening.
Quick reference
| Protocol | Full-screen mirroring | Uses your router | Android support | Typical TV support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miracast | Yes | No, direct link | Samsung, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, Huawei | Samsung, LG, Roku, Fire TV, Hisense VIDAA |
| Google Cast | Yes | Yes | All phones with Google services | Google TV, Android TV, Vizio, Chromecast |
| AirPlay 2 | Yes | Yes | None | Samsung 2018+, LG 2019+ |
| DLNA | No, files only | Yes | Most Android phones | Most smart TVs |
What about Anyview Cast, Smart View and Screen Share?
These are brand names, not separate technologies. Anyview Cast is Hisense’s Miracast implementation on VIDAA televisions. Smart View is Samsung’s. Screen Share is LG’s. Underneath, all three are Miracast, which is why a phone that works with one usually works with the others.
It also means these are free features built into the hardware. If your phone and TV both support Miracast, you do not need any app to use them - the app is a convenience layer for finding devices and managing the connection, not the thing that makes mirroring possible.