Google has recently announced on its Chromecast support pages, which were last updated in late April, that it will no longer provide support for Chromecast (gen 1st), which means that these devices will no longer get security or software updates, and technical support for these devices are not provided by Google anymore.
Google also notified us that the performance of these devices might also degrade in future as no support is to be provided for them.
The first generation Chromecast, which looked like a key with an HDMI port on one side and a micro-USB port on the other for power delivery, was a portable device. This device had the ‘Google Chrome logo' on the top. This dongle could stream HD videos and was available with a flash storage of 2GB and RAM of 512MB.
The company launched this device a decade ago to facilitate casting a mobile device or a tablet to the television. It could display audio-visual, internet-streamed content on a home audio system or a high-definition television.
This Chromecast used to allow its user to simply turn their pretty normal TVs into smart ones using a smartphone as its remote. It used to interface with the smartphones of the user and provided access to Youtube, Netflix, Google Movies & TV, HBO, Google Music, and many more applications.
When Chromecast gen 1st was introduced, this device a key-shape was priced at $35 which was seen as a very inexpensive way of getting video streaming apps on TV at that time when if you want to watch video streaming content on a television, you needed to switch to a smart TV.
This Chromecast was the only one to be available in a streaming- stick design, with a micro – USB port providing the power, this Chromecast plugged directly into the HDMI port of the TV and the fact that is used to be directly controlled by the smartphone itself making it even more interesting for users.
At times when it was not streaming a video, it used to display a screensaver rather than a complicated on- screen interface.
The company released this Chromecast in 2013 which was the 1st gen Chromecast and later on released the updated versions with the second-generation Chromecast which was Puck-shaped in 2015 and launched the third-generation Chromecast in 2018 along with a 4k-capable Chromecast Ultra.
The last update that the 1st gen Chromecast received was in November last year, which improved the performance of the device and fixed some bugs as well. Prior to that, the last update was received three years ago.
