Samsung is reportedly working on its own version of Apple’s AirDrop file transfer service. AirDrop allows iOS and Mac users to transfer files between devices over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
Samsung’s “Quick Share” feature will work similarly to AirDrop, allowing files to be sent between two Galaxy phones in close proximity, so long as both devices have the feature turned on. Like AirDrop, Galaxy users will be able to restrict who can send them files (“Everyone” or “Contacts Only”). I assume Samsung users could face the issue of unwanted file shares if they set the restriction to “everyone.”
XDA Developers reports:
Quick Share is slated to be a pretty simple and tool for quickly sending files between two Galaxy phones. We were able to get the APK running on a few different Galaxy phones but we were unable to get two files to transfer between the devices. The APK was not meant for our test devices so it’s not surprising it’s not working.
While AirDrop is a direct device-to-device transfer, Samsung’s Quick Share is expected to involve a temporary cloud-storage component that will allow transferring of files to SmartThings connected home devices. The maximum size of transferred files will be up to 1GB with a total of 2GBs being sent per day.
Samsung is not the only company working on an AirDrop clone, as China’s big three mobile vendors Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo are also working together on an AirDrop-style peer-to-peer transfer protocol that is expected to debut next month.
AirDrop debuted alongside iOS 7, which was quite a few years ago. Android used to offer a similar feature, the NFC-based “Android Beam,” but the feature was discontinued with Android 10. There are third-party alternatives available, such as Google’s “Files Go” app.
Quick Share is expected to launch alongside Samsung’s S20+ device, which will debut on February 11.
