Google Confirms AirDrop Sharing is Coming To Android Phones Beyond Pixels

Google's Quick Share-AirDrop interoperability, which has been exclusive to the Pixel 10 series since its surprise launch last year, is headed to a much broader set of Android devices in 2026.

Eric Kay, Google's Vice President of Engineering for the Android platform, confirmed the expansion during a press briefing at the company's Taipei office, saying Google is "working with our partners to expand it into the rest of the ecosystem" and that announcements are coming "very soon." Nothing is the only OEM to have publicly confirmed it's working on support, though Qualcomm has also hinted at enabling the feature on Snapdragon-powered phones.

why airdrop ?

[johnjones]

given that airdrop reduces your network MTTR why would you enable it ?

https://ripe91.ripe.net/programme/meeting-plan/sessions/15/3KJJLU/

Re:why airdrop ?

[dgatwood]

given that airdrop reduces your network MTTR why would you enable it ?

https://ripe91.ripe.net/programme/meeting-plan/sessions/15/3KJJLU/

1. It doesn't require an infrastructure WiFi network. If you're somewhere that has no network, it works. Other protocols don't work at all without an infrastructure WiFi network unless they send all of the data over cellular (very slow).

2. It uses bandwidth more efficiently than infrastructure WiFi. Because both devices are talking directly to each other instead of sending data to an access point which then passes it on, peer-to-peer networking puts half as much traffic into the air.

Yeah, there's some extra jitter from channel switching, so it would be great if WiFi chipset vendors addressed that by having radios that could simultaneously talk on two channels, but that's an implementation detail.

Re: why airdrop ?

[fluffernutter]

I can't say I have ever been in the wilderness with no internet and wanted to transfer a file.

Re:

[twdorris]

I can't say I have ever been in the wilderness with no internet and wanted to transfer a file.

It saddens me to hear this. Last time I needed to do this was just a few months ago. It's relatively common to be honest.

I was hiking along the ridge of the white mountains. Overnight some fellow hikers had taken some amazing shots of the milky way. Sure we could have exchanged e-mail addresses or numbers and then waited until we all got back down a few days later where we once again had cell coverage and then hoped they remember and/or bother to send to you so you could share that experience with other

Re:

[dgatwood]

It's really not a far fetched idea. I'm sure I'm in that situation at least 2 or 3 times each year and I'm sure in the absence of said functionality, there are photos and memories I would have long since forgotten.

Weekly for me, mostly for multi-gigabyte video files. Mind you, I could walk a few hundred feet and be on an infra network, but that's extra time and effort that doesn't need to be spent.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Other places you might want to exchange photos - on a plane, on a cruise, maybe on a bus. You can't always count on being able to communicate through WiFi.

In the past, we called this OBEX - or OBject EXchange - there are many OBEX protocols out there because it's a frequent situation. The common one of the 90s was IR - those little IR ports on computers that let you send a file or other thing between devices. Bluetooth implements a variation of it as the more modern way to transfer files, but Bluetooth is g

Re:

[Moridineas]

> Other places you might want to exchange photos - on a plane, on a cruise, maybe on a bus. You can't always count on being able to communicate through WiFi.

That's also a double edged sword. My kid's middleschool banned phones on buses after some miscreant airdropped naughty pictures to everyone who had airdrop enabled and open.

Re:

[fluffernutter]

My lord how did we ever survive before smartphones.

Re:

[fluffernutter]

Ok but a usb cable would have done the same thing.

Re:

[Tom Veil]

I've been to several events where someone was sharing a group photo with visitors and it was far easier for them to AirDrop to everyone in the vicinity instead of getting everyone's contact information whether there was easy internet access or not. (And it's definitely been "or not" a few times.)

And several times I was the lone holdout with an Android making things harder on the people sharing.

While there are other solutions, including Google Files, the reality is that AirDrop is ubiquitous in many places,

Re:

[fluffernutter]

I guess I have never been at an event I wanted to remember so much that I was willing to get an infection.

Re: why airdrop ?

[fluffernutter]

If you wanted the picture so badly why didn't you ask to have it emailed or find a USB cable? I don't travel without a selection of cables.

Re:

[Tom Veil]

Usually email ended up being the solution, but even when that succeeded (sometimes I'd just never get it, especially if the photographer was a friend of a friend), the issue I'm trying to draw attention to is how it affected the group dynamics, not whether there were technical alternatives to make the transfer happen.

If email felt like a hassle, I can only imagine how asking them to plug a USB cable into something would have landed. (Not even sure what they would be plugging it into unless I was lugging a l

Re:

[fluffernutter]

Ok so you are basically just saying you like airdrop because it helps you fit in and make friends. I didn't realise you were in grade school.

Re:

[_merlin]

Samsung's S-Beam worked without a WiFi network as well - it exchanged the information necessary to set up a WiFi Direct connection over NFC, then did the transfer using the WiFi radio. It didn't require a WiFi network or Internet connection to work. It had the added benefit that you were pretty much guaranteed not to be accidentally sharing the file with the wrong person, because it required putting the phones back-to-back for the NFC handshake. I don't know why they seem to have removed it (along with o

Re:

[sabbede]

Because lower MTTR is better?

Re: Malware

[SeeKay]

Probably less about what you want and more about Google stealing whatever data they can while connected to an Apple device

This is so stupidâ¦

[HnT]

I am generally for some of the EU crackdowns that are pro-consumer, but in a world full of thousands of messengers and hundreds of other means of sharing any and all data between all devices, AirDrop really isnt a hill to choose for a battle or to die on - neither does it matter whether other phones can send and receive from it.

This feels like very politically motivated grandstanding from the geriatric, overly-satiated Brussels autocrats and technocrats.

They should spend their time on pushing USBC as a univ

Re: This is so stupidâ¦

[fluffernutter]

I can only gather that its because a lot of people with iPhones have trouble with the hundreds of ways to share a file?

Re:

[sabbede]

Aren't you worried that the government enforcing a single charging standard will only delay adoption of the next technology as market processes stall waiting on the bureaucracy to catch up? If you don't think that half of a legislature will be against updating the standard, think again!

Re:

[lucifuge31337]

This is one of those statements where it's clear the poster doesn't understand the two thing can be bad at the same time, and one of them can be worse than the other.

Your concerns are the better of the only two bad choices available. Do nothing and "the market" will continue to act in the interest of shareholders rather than people, which is how we go here.....

Re:

[sabbede]

Shareholders are people.

And yes, I do understand that two things can be bad. I'm suggesting that for a government, which are not known for technical expertise, to decide what a highly technical industry's standards should be, is probably the worse option.

Useless feature for one simple reason

[_xanthus_47]

Who would want to share files between Androids and iPhones? The markets in which these two ecosystems dominate are entirely different. There is no comingling. Even in places where they each have a sizeable userbase (when you look at the entire 100% graph), I would wager there is a class difference or social isolation between the two groups of people who use iPhones and Androids. It is not Android's fault but entirely the premium price and aura of being in an "in-group" that iPhone has cultivated. So I solel

Re:

[ChunderDownunder]

Contraband, duh.

With various nations following Australia's authoritarian nanny state ban on social media, teenagers will be forced to sneaker-net.

Re:

[twdorris]

There is no comingling.

Ah, if only that were true. Sadly, there are people that simply refuse to acknowledge the superior experience of using the Apple ecosystem across phones, watches, laptops, desktops, etc., etc. My wife and kids being among those stubborn hold outs with arms crossed and brows furrowed yammering on and on about elitist this or snobby that...whatever. ;)

Yes, yes, I'm JOKING! Please no flames. I mean...the situation I described is real enough, but c'mon, can't we all just get along and inter-operate!? LOL

Re:

[unixisc]

There are people, even within families, where some members may have iPhones and others Androids. Just like 2 iPhone users can use AirDrop to easily share things like photos, similarly 2 people w/ different phones may wish to do the same. It's not, or at least shouldn't be, about the egos of either Apple nor Google executives, much less the egos of Apple or Android fanbois

Beyond pixels

[ZiggyZiggyZig]

I'm of course happy to have AirDrop coming to my Android phone, but i'd utterly glad to learn that we will finally get some pixels in there too. Actually, I thought there were already pixels in my display, but probably I was mistaken - it's hard to follow all those technical innovations nowadays.

Re:

[sabbede]

These are Beyond Pixels. A plant-based alternative to traditional pixels, which contain meat byproducts.

What about QuickShare?

[unixisc]

There is already an app QuickShare, which allows one to transfer files b/w iOS and Android. Can't Google and Apple just endorse that?

Re:

[DogFoodBuss]

There are 3 major problems with QuickShare: 1.) You need to have QuickShare. When you need to share something, the chances of a given person having your specific app installed (out of the thousands available) is basically zero. 2.) You need to use the app. There is no app for AirDrop; it's a system-wide service that works with virtually any datatype you encounter on an Apple device. You just click the "Share" button and then choose who to AirDrop stuff to. 3.) It can only share files. In many instance

Re:

[unixisc]

Yeah, but both companies could pre-install it in system settings. If it's in Android, it'll only be in the latest phones that can be upgraded to that current version