Technology does not stand still and every day brings new opportunities into our lives. In the past, to share a photo, a book, or a newspaper article with a friend, we passed it from hand to hand or sent it by mail. Later, the Internet, e-mail, and local networks appeared. All this made life easier, but still required some manipulations with the storage medium. The new word in sharing was Bluetooth, which made it possible to share all the necessary information with a neighbor, and a new technology followed it. In 2012, we found out that this is Android Beam. It is vaguely similar to sending data via infrared, since the devices need to be kept nearby, but it works much faster.
What is Android Beam in a smartphone
This technology is a device-to-device transfer tool that uses NFC and Bluetooth to send photos, videos, contact information, web page links, navigation directions, YouTube URLs, and other data from one device to another by combining them into a microgrid.
The main benefit of using Android Beam is that it's a quick and easy way to transfer data directly to another device without having to upload to cloud platforms such as Google Drive and Dropbox. The disadvantage is that both the transmitting and receiving devices must have an NFC sensor, which is not present in all smartphone models.
In addition to sending data to friends and colleagues, you can use this technology when switching to a new smartphone, if your old one also has an NFC sensor. In such a case, you can simply use the two devices together during the new phone setup process to transfer all your accounts and data. This way you don't have to manually set up your new phone from scratch.
How to use Android Beam
We have already found out above that this is one of the most convenient ways to transfer data from one smartphone to another today, but how to use Android Beam? Setting it up is pretty simple. First, make sure your phone has an NFC sensor. The easiest way to do this, apart from searching, is to go to "Settings" and then "Advanced" (this menu item may also be called "More").
Most often, the latter is located directly under the line "data transfer", but its location may differ depending on the firmware version of your device. Here you should see a switch for NFC, and looking at the item directly below it you will see thatthis is Android Beam.
If you don't see NFC or Android Beam, it's likely that this feature is not available on your phone. If NFC is present but you can't see Android Beam, don't worry, it should still work.
Data transfer
The technology uses NFC, which means that Android Beam does not require an internet connection, meaning you can transfer files and content offline. You can also enable Bluetooth, but this is optional as NFC communication is automatically enabled and disabled when the data transfer is completed. Once NFC has been enabled, you should see an N logo in the status bar, indicating that everything is going according to plan.
Then you need to select the file, photo or any other content you want to share. Please note that some devices do not support transferring large files such as movies or large libraries via Beam.
So, open the file you want to transfer, place the two devices on top of each other and make sure the screen is on on both phones. After that, a vibration will follow, and on the device from which you are sending content, you will see the words Tap to Beam.
When you confirm the sending, notifications will appear on both devices about the transfer/reception of data. Once the content is downloaded, you can open it by tapping on the notification that appears.
So we found out that Android Beam is a simple, fast and convenient way to transfer data to a nearby device.
