Samsung and Google have decided to adopt the same technology to easily and wirelessly transfer files between smartphones, tablets and PCs. From now on, everything will be done with Quick Share, the equivalent of Apple’s famous AirDrop.
On Apple devices, when it comes to quickly and easily exchanging files between the brand’s devices without using any cables, the question of which solution to use does not arise: it is AirDrop which sticks to it. The wireless transfer protocol developed by the Apple brand is both devilishly effective and simple to implement. It only takes a few seconds to transfer an image from one iPhone to another or send a document from an iPad to a Mac, for example, all wirelessly, using only Bluetooth and direct Wi-Fi. The only drawback of AirDrop is that it is reserved for the Apple ecosystem.
On Android, there is no shortage of similar solutions either, but given the openness of Google’s system and the number of players present, it is necessarily a little more confusing. There are therefore many free apps and services to achieve the same result as what AirDrop offers for exchanging files wirelessly between Android devices and even between Android and Windows. But this implies that users wishing to exchange files all rely on the same app. We are therefore far from the fully integrated solution offered by Apple.
Two simple models, however, managed to stand out from the crowd. On the one hand, Quick Share, the solution from Samsung, one of the giants of the Android world. Installed straight away on all its own devices, but only compatible with the brand’s tablets, PCs, TVs and smartphones. On the other, Nearby Share, signed by the boss of Android, Google. Present on Android for almost four years and on Windows since last year, Nearby Share does not differentiate between brands and provides just as much simplicity as Quick Share in its operation. And if the Apple world still escapes this solution, it is possible to equip a Mac with an unofficial app, NearDropto send a file from an Android smartphone to a computer via Nearby Share.
Wireless transfer: Google’s Nearby Share gives way to Samsung’s Quick Share
Quick Share from Samsung and Neaby Share from Google: two almost equivalent solutions… that’s one too many! To put an end to the confusion, Samsung and Google have decided to merge their respective visions of wireless file sharing within the same service which will henceforth be called Quick Share, taking the name used by Samsung. Quick Share therefore officially becomes the Android counterpart of AirDrop.
“We’ve integrated the experiences and created the best built-in default option for peer-to-peer content sharing across all device types in the Android and Chromebook ecosystems“, indicates Google in its blog post. And, obviously, the firm does not intend to stop there to deploy Quick Share on a larger scale. “And to make sharing even more seamless across devices, we’re working with major PC makers like LG to extend Quick Share to Windows PCs as a pre-installed app . Knowing that Nearby Share and Quick Share are already available on Windows through free applications of the same name, integration should not present any difficulty.
In short, everything indicates that Quick Share will soon become the universal standard for wireless file transfer on Android and Windows. Note that the name Nearby Share should give way to Quick Share during the month of February 2024.