The chat continues on all linked devices from the point in time that they are linked.
Imagine two people having a face-to-face conversation, then a third person walks up and joins in. The third person doesn’t know what was said before they joined the conversation, but all three continue the conversation from that point on.
Linked devices are like the above example, if two of those people were married and tell each other every conversation they’ve had since their wedding.
No drawbacks for my use case, but there are a few quirks.
Some apps that I’ve dabbled with might show vertically, but most of the Android TV compatible apps were fine.
Some apps seem to expect a touchscreen input, and don’t really show what’s highlighted or selected very well, so navigating with just a TV style remote control can be tricky. I have a mouse and keyboard that I also use, definitely the easiest option.
Lastly, the Shield is a pretty powerful device, so I always kinda feel like I’m not using it to its fullest potential. I haven’t really tried any gaming with it, I don’t use it as a media server or anything, just a simple stream box. That’s less of a quirk with the device itself, and more an issue with me feeling like I should be putting it to better use.
Happy to answer any other questions you may have!
I have an Nvidia Shield running LineageOS.
The setup process wasn’t too bad, but the Shield might be more money than you want to spend.
I use it for Netflix and Plex, as well as Spotify, with no problems. It tells me that Netflix is not optimised for the device, but plays fine. I’ve heard that Netflix may limit it to 720p, but the quality is as good as you can expect from Netflix anyway.
Plex works perfectly, can stream 4k from my media server with no issues. I will eventually transition to Jellyfin, once I convince the 4 other households that have access to my Plex library to sort themselves out.
I haven’t actually synced a new phone to Signal, does everything just carry over? I assumed you needed to transfer your account from phone to phone, not just link a new device.