Google Confirms AirDrop Sharing is Coming To Android Phones Beyond Pixels
(Friday February 06, 2026 @05:30AM (msmash)
from the up-next dept.)
- Reference: 0180736788
- News link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/02/05/1935209/google-confirms-airdrop-sharing-is-coming-to-android-phones-beyond-pixels
- Source link:
Google's Quick Share-AirDrop interoperability, which has been exclusive to the Pixel 10 series [1]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 [2]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.
[1] https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/11/20/1732245/you-can-finally-airdrop-files-between-android-and-iphone-starting-with-pixel-10
[2] https://www.androidauthority.com/google-android-airdrop-expansion-3638222/
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 [2]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.
[1] https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/11/20/1732245/you-can-finally-airdrop-files-between-android-and-iphone-starting-with-pixel-10
[2] https://www.androidauthority.com/google-android-airdrop-expansion-3638222/
Re: Malware (Score:1)
by SeeKay ( 883500 )
Probably less about what you want and more about Google stealing whatever data they can while connected to an Apple device
This is so stupid⦠(Score:2)
by HnT ( 306652 )
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
why airdrop ? (Score:2)
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 ? (Score:4, Insightful)
> 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.