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Comment by oreilles | Hacker News Reader

Why Bluetooth when WiFi is a hundred times faster?

AFAIK there's still no standardized, non-proprietary, easy, out of the box way to share files between different phones brands/OS and/or PCs using WiFi as Android/Samsung/Apple each do their own thing here.

You have to resort to setting up an ftp server and/or download extra apps on your phone for this, whereas Bluetooth file sharing is standardized and should work out of the box on any phone brand or OS (not sure on iPhones though) and anyone should know how to use it without needing any third party apps.

Just about every OS has built in ftp support except Android.

Material Files is an Android file manager that adds the missing ftp support.

Start/stop the ftp server with a single click. I have yet to find anything easier.

I'm pretty sure my parents would have no idea how to setup an ftp service on their phones but they do know how to use Bluetooth.

Plus, non-iOS/Android feature phones don't have ftp support but they do have bluetooth so this cross-compatibility out of the box is another advantage.

I know how to use Bluetooth --- and I generally find it harder to setup than the 1 click ftp server in Material Files.

And I know how to do things from the command line faster than some people using a GUI, but this elitist way of thinking needs to stop. Consumer devices and their features should be easily accessible to everyone regardless of their tech skills.

That's why Apple is a multi-trillion dollar company. Because people want the easy way. If things require extra apps, extra steps and reading tutorials/instructions to use, you can bet most people will stop right there.

I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just saying how things work for the masses.

It can be done using WebRTC with something like snapdrop.net. Still requires both devices being able to connect to their signaling server, but at least it works on every device, doesn't require you to install something, it's peer to peer, and open source.

Sure, but take care as I said "easy, out of the box way" that any user can do, not the way that requires 5 years of sys-admin experience and 3 dev-ops certifications to pull off.

I call it the (grand)parents test. If they can't figure it out on their own then it's not user friendly enough.

Yeah I get what you mean, I didn't actually mean implementing it yourself, but just going to snapdrop.net. That should doable for most people I assume.

Assuming they're already on the same wireless network.

And that the wireless network isn't doing client isolation like "free wifi" type networks do. Most of my "oh send me that video" type AirDrop interactions are in places like bars.

VLC and possibly other apps on iOS can act as web server allowing file up-/download.

KDE connect is actually really fantastic at this.

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