Technology does not stand still and every day brings new opportunities to our lives. Previously, to share a photograph, a book or an article in a newspaper with a friend, we passed them from hand to hand or sent them by mail. Later appeared the Internet, email, local area networks. All this made life easier, but still required some manipulations with the storage medium. Bluetooth became the new word in the sharing, allowing you to share with your neighbor all the necessary information, and after it was a new technology. In 2012, we learned that this is Android Beam. It remotely resembles data transmission 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 tool for transferring data from device to device, which uses NFC and Bluetooth to send photos, videos, contact information, links to web pages, navigation directions, YouTube URLs, other data from one device to another, combining them into microgrid.
The main advantage of using Android Beam is that it is a quick and easy way to transfer data directly to another device without having to download 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 smartphones.
In addition to transferring 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 this case, you can simply use the two devices together during the process of setting up a new phone to transfer all your accounts and data. Thus, you do not need to manually configure a 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, but how to use Android Beam? Setting it up is pretty simple. First, make sure your phone has an NFC sensor installed. The easiest way to do this, besides the search, is to go to “Settings”, and then “Advanced” (this menu item may also be called “More”).
Most often, the latter is located directly below the “data transfer” line, but its location may differ depending on the firmware version of your device. Here you should see the switch for NFC, and looking at the item directly below it, you will see that it is Android Beam.
If you don’t see NFC or Android Beam, most likely this feature is not available on your phone. If NFC is present, but you don’t see Android Beam, don’t worry, it should work anyway.
Data transfer
The technology uses NFC, which means that Android Beam does not require an Internet connection, that is, you can transfer files and content offline. You can also turn on Bluetooth, but this is not necessary, as NFC communication is automatically turned on and off when data transfer is completed. After NFC has been turned on, you should see the N logo in the status bar, signaling that everything is going as planned.
Then you need to select the file, photo or any other content that you want to share. It should be noted that some devices do not support the transfer of large files, such as movies or large libraries, through Beam.
So, open the file you want to transfer, place the two devices on top of each other and make sure that the screen is turned on for both phones. After that, 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 transmission / reception of data. After downloading the content, 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.