Google have never had a decent device to device file sharing option in Android so some big players in the Android took it upon themselves to develop a new protocol. Originally starting with Xiaomi, OPPO and Vivo the Peer-to-Peer Transmission Alliance uses a protocol based on high speed Wi-Fi Direct transfer to accomplish the fast file transfer.
The new protocol can send files at an average speed of 20MB/s and the protocol obviously has potential with more companies signing onto it. OPPO stablemates realme and OnePlus have joined the alliance along with Black Shark (Chinese gaming phone company apparently NOT owned by Xiaomi but was/is heavily invested in by Xiaomi — take that how you wish) and big Chinese brand Meizu bringing the number of companies involved to seven but more importantly close to, if not over, a third (1,2) of ALL global smartphone sales.
The new members of the alliance were announced on Chinese social media size Weibo with the expected users to now be able to use it at over 400 million! At this stage it is unclear just which versions of their software support the transfer protocol except for Black Shark which requires JoyUI 11 for it to work. We expect that realme will require realme UI to begin with and you would expect OnePlus to possibly add it with a software update soon.
With this many users it is possibly time for Google to implement it into Android. We know they are working on their own called Fast Share but they have had a long time to do so and have yet to actually implement it. It might be a case of too little too late. There is only Samsung left for Google to get their file sharing out to the masses unless they drop it into AOSP and Huawei can grab it from there.
We tested it out and it is already live between OPPO phones running Android 10 (ColorOS 7) and the realme 6 (realme UI 1.0) although at this stage it only worked for photos and did not seem to work for movies (MP4), apk files or mp3 files. The speed was much faster than anything we have seen in peer-to-peer on Android before so hopefully Google either implement this or something that is at least compatible with this — especially considering a third of smartphones sold in the world will soon support this protocol.
Although it has limited use just yet the ability to transfer files easily and quickly to supported devices is something that we have all wanted for so long — Apple have had it for ages with AirDrop. Hopefully this new protocol is the answer — some big name companies seem to believe it is.
I wonder how long it will be, before there is a Chinese ‘government’ requirement to have this on all Chinadroid devices?
This is only Chinese companies pushing their own standards and not the *free world*. No thanks! They can keep it to themselves.
You are foolish if you really believe the US government. Technology should be independent of governments especially the over bearing USA and China.