I sit behind a keyboard, mouse, monitor, and an incredibly powerful desktop operating system for 99% of the working day. These devices are pretty much the pinnacle of human-computer interaction; arguably the best tools we have for interacting with digital content with speed and efficiency.
But as soon as I want to do something involving my phone, I have to physically reach for it and immediately hamper myself with its limited UI, screen size, and ludicrously locked-down ecosystem limitations.
Smartphones have been around for decades and yet we're still nowhere close to seamless integration with the rest of our devices. The best we've got are clunky half-featured workarounds (Airdroid) or overly-complex techy solutions inaccessible to laypeople (VNC).
As another commenter said, it's all very much intentional. It's a deliberate choice on behalf of greedy phone manufacturers and greedy app developers. And it's really, really frustrating.
Link to Phone sends all your data (Messages, calls, notifications) to Microsoft. It also requires a Microsoft account. Admittedly for file transfers it's a bit different, if you're on the same network it will attempt a direct connection so MS won't get your files. It still sends the meta data (file names, file sizes) to Microsoft, though.
Similar issues with Smart Connect from Motorola.
An entirely local solution like KDE Connect is better, if your situation permits it. Unfortunately it has been quite unreliable for me (and I have tried many devices) but it seems to work just fine for others!
Imagine being able to just send a file from an Android phone to an iPhone without a centralized service and an Internet connection (i.e. like we could in the time of feature phones and early smartphones via Bluetooth)...
Please think of the shareholders and the lawful interceptors before you suggest something as subversive!
Where do you get the FTP client and server from without an Internet connection, and how do you create a network between the two?
And would you say that this is comparable in terms of complexity with e.g. Airdrop or selecting "send via Bluetooth" and picking the recipient's device name?
> Where do you get the FTP client and server from without an Internet connection
Until last year, your web browser will usually download files. These days, you have to start an HTTP server. Which is actually easier, because FTP is a messy protocol.
> how do you create a network between the two
WiFi Direct has been built into phones for at least a decade.
> And would you say that this is comparable in terms of complexity with e.g. Airdrop or selecting "send via Bluetooth" and picking the recipient's device name?
On the sender side, the "send via" option can appear in the standard sharing app list. On the recipient's side, you may need to scan a QR code to finish the WiFi Direct connection. Starting the download should be as easy as having the sending app pretend to be a WiFi login portal so the phone automatically pops up the web page.
But if you're just sending files offline, there's always Nearby Share or plain old Bluetooth if the files are small enough.
> On the sender side, the "send via" option can appear in the standard sharing app list.
Can, but does it? Defaults matter. And how would the receiver be notified that they should download some file via FTP?
As long as such a feature does not come preinstalled on smartphones, I'll continue considering this lack of previously commonplace functionality an intentional vendor lock-in.
>how would the receiver be notified that they should download some file via FTP
You tell them "hey I want to share a file with you, scan this QR code". The QR code sets up the WiFi Direct connection, the fake portal login should auto-open a "click here to download" button (or redirect to a file, but I don't think that's allowed), and once the file is downloaded you terminate the Wi-Fi Direct connection.
But that presumes phones don't have a method to share files. They have that feature built in. It's called Nearby Share on Android and AirDrop on iOS. Both use some weird pairing mechanism and some form of Wi-Fi Direct to transfer files, but the interface is just a bit more integrated.
When Apple opens up Airdrop or when Google convinces Apple to pre-install Nearby Share, we'll get the universal file transfer we desperately need.
What about people who have never heard the term "FTP" and don't know what a client or a server is?
Nobody cares what we do, we know how to use our computers well, and will force them to do what we want them to do in ingenious ways, and we will share those ways with each other. The problem comes when one of us puts that solution into a user-friendly mobile package that can be installed and run with your elbow, and then somebody makes a tiktok about it.
That app is getting nuked. Maybe even the internal API that enabled that app is getting nuked. If it's a standard protocol, it's getting extended and extinguished. The people who made it and the people who host it are getting legal letters.
The fact that Google and Apple could quickly agree on a standard for both cross-platform Covid contact tracing and "stalker warnings" for "Find My" trackers, but not for cross-platform encrypted text messaging or an interoperable AirDrop extension, shows that it's purely a problem of incentives.
> no first class standardized ways to move files over the Internet between PC/mobile/edge devices
FTP? You can open an app on your phone, start an FTP server, use UPnP to poke a hole in the router, show their public IP address, send a text message to your friend with the IP, port, username & password in a single URL, connect, send/receive files.
I meant modern -- you can use FTP over stuff like ZeroTier or Tailscale but otherwise you can't do P2P with it (firewalls, V4 NAT) and it's not secure. TS has some facility for transfer but again-- TS-specific, not available everywhere, not standard, and not suitable for all cases.
I also meant things regular people can easily use and that can be used as conveniently as e.g. Apple's AirDrop (which is nice but only works between Apple stuff).
It's part a UI/UX problem and part a missing standards problem. The latter precedes the former.
> firewalls, V4 NAT
That's why they added 'use UPnP to poke a hole in the router'. Which will work on most networks, though CGNAT will still break it if IPv6 isn't available.
There are plenty of other tools out there that can send files between devices. Google+Samsung's Nearby Share work pretty much everywhere. KDE Connect works on any device I can think of. I wish Google+Samsung would make it an open standard but I'm guessing they won't do it so they can rewrite the app whenever they please.
The biggest, and IMO only, problem for AirDrop competitors is that they're not pre-installed on iPhones and iPads while AirDrop is. AirDrop is nothing special in itself, though Apple did implement it in a rather weird way. All you need to mimic it is Bluetooth (BLE if you're fancy) for handshakes and WiFi Direct for transfers.
This is the same predictable reply as the naysayers at the launch of DropBox. Both of us know that expecting people to set up FTP is a complete nonstarter.
