Android Beam: A better way to connect

One of the interesting features of mobile phones has been the capability to connect one to another and share or transfer content between the two. One would recall the early days of infra red connectivity where you had to align the phones side by side before they could connect, and the speed of transfer was rather slow.


The things you could transfer were small amounts of data like phone contacts or pictures.

Thankfully, technology improved, bringing the popular Bluetooth connectivity that made connecting phones and transfer speed much faster. The amount and the type of data that could be transferred increased to include movies, music or contacts via Bluetooth. There is also the existence of Wi-Fi which allows a mobile device connect to a wireless network mainly for the purpose of connecting to the internet.

Any user of Bluetooth should be familiar with the term ‘pairing’ which the phones must do before connecting for the transfer process to be initiated. This can be sometimes prove to be a challenge because some phones don’t pair easily depending on the manufacturer.

Now, there is a technology that cuts out the pairing process such that you can ‘beam’ data from one phone to another, and connect faster.

Google has done this by adding Android Beam to its Android Operating System (OS). Android Beam is a capability built into Android-based smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. It first appeared in the Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) version of the OS that debuted in October 2011. According to the makers, Beam is a feature that enables just about any type of proximity-based interaction.

What that simply means is you could just touch your smartphone to another smartphone or tablet to transfer movies, Web site links, YouTube videos, links to apps, maps and directions -- or just about anything else on the phone you can think of. According to a source, because Google’s Android OS (operating system) is found on about half of smartphones sold these days, Beam is already spreading throughout the land.

In order to engage Beam, you need a phone with Near Field Communication (NFC) capabilities.

Near Field Communication, like Bluetooth, is a type of wireless communications standard.

As the name implies, it works only in close proximity (about four inches or fewer) to another NFC device. NFC is still an emerging technology, and even by 2014, it may only be shipped in about 20 percent of the world’s cell phones, according to an online source. However, consumer adoption of technology has been known to defy predictions, therefore NFC may gain prominence much sooner.

You can buy NFC phones right now, though. Currently, some new phones  like Sony Xperia Z, Samsung S3, S4 have this functionality, but you can bet that the list of phones will expand rapidly in the near future. In order for Beam to work, both smartphones involved in the interaction must have NFC chips, or tags, and NFC must be enabled via the phone’s settings.

Once you find a friend who has an NFC phone, Beam is designed to be exceedingly easy to use. Let’s say your phone is displaying directions to the venue of the engagement you both plan to attend, and your friend wants to meet you there later.

You can instantly share those directions with Beam. You just touch your phone to your friend’s, and a “Touch to Beam” prompt appears on your phone. Tap the screen and your map immediately appears on the other phone. Now your friend has no excuse for getting lost or being late.

The same process works for Web sites, online videos, pictures, contacts and a whole lot more. Perhaps best of all, because Beam is part of Android’s open-source development philosophy, any third-party company can dream up their own creative uses for Beam.