Will Google’s Android XR glasses be better than the Meta Ray-Bans?

00:00 – Mishaal Rahman: Google and Apple are finally making it easier to switch between the Android and iOS ecosystems.

00:04 – C. Scott Brown: And I finally got to try some new Android XR prototypes and they were incredible.

00:11 – Mishaal Rahman: I’m Mishaal Rahman.

00:13 – C. Scott Brown: And I’m C. Scott Brown, and this is the Authority Insights Podcast where we break down the latest news and leaks surrounding the Android operating system.

00:22 – Mishaal Rahman: So the details are a bit light right now, but Google and Apple have apparently confirmed that they are working together to make transferring data between Android and iOS devices a little bit easier during setup. If true, this could be a huge deal.

00:36 – C. Scott Brown: And another huge deal is that Google could finally be bringing the heat to Meta with releasing some Android XR smart glasses. So these would be based on the Android XR operating system that we’ve already seen on other devices, but next year we’ll finally actually get glasses that will compete against the Meta Ray-Bans.

00:55 – C. Scott Brown: And finally, we’ve discovered clues that Google is working on its own version of NameDrop for Android. This feature will let you send contact info by tapping two Android phones together, just like we did way back in the day with the Bump app. If you are ancient like me, then you’ll remember that.

01:16 – Mishaal Rahman: Ah come on Scott, we’re not that old. Let us live a little longer before they start calling us uncs.

01:25 – Mishaal Rahman: Before we move on to the NameDrop story, circling back to the Android and Apple data transfer story. I wanted to kind of touch on that first because that’s the one we kind of have the least amount of details on because it was kind of a surprise announcement. So Google, they released the latest Android Canary update last week. And at the same time, they kind of told 9to5Google that there is apparently some kind of improved, enhanced data transfer solution between Android and iOS, but they didn’t share any details whatsoever. All they said was that they are collaborating together—Google and Apple—to improve data transfer. Like, we basically have that’s it. That’s all we know. They’re working on making it easier to transfer data during setup of a new Android phone or of a new iOS device.

The only thing that we do know is that these changes are live in the latest 2512, the December Android Canary release, and they will be coming to a future iOS 26 beta release. That’s all we know, but we don’t really know exactly what these changes entail. But our resident APK teardown specialist AssembleDebug took a look through the Android restore applications and he figured out some potential new details. So first of all, he discovered that some of the things that might be transferable include accessibility settings, music playlists, passwords and passkeys, wallet cards, and Wi-Fi credentials. And that in contrast, currently, Android supports transferring things like your photos, your contacts, messages, and some free applications that are available cross-platform across a cable. So it would be a big upgrade to have these new data types that are being supported with the cross-device transfer.

So Scott, I wanted to get your first reaction to this news. What are your thoughts on this surprise announcement by Apple and Google? Like, were you expecting it? Is this a wise move for Apple to do? Like why would Apple even sign on to doing this considering they’ve long been a proponent of their walled garden ecosystem approach?

03:29 – C. Scott Brown: I definitely did not expect this. I don’t think anyone expected this. Like this is so out of left field for Apple. I mean it’s not very out of left field for Google because Google obviously wants to make it as easy as possible for people who are deciding to exit the iOS ecosystem and come over to Android. But yeah, Apple for years and years and years, the entire time the iPhone’s been around, has been doing everything it possibly can to prevent people from leaving iOS and going to Android.

I think this comes down to regulation. I think that Apple is starting to realize that if it wants to avoid spending millions or probably in total now probably billions of dollars in court and in fees and in all these things for its anti… its monopolistic practices. If it wants to avoid those things, it has to start figuring out, it has to start being proactive. It sort of has to figure out like, okay, what are they going to go after about us next? Can we preemptively change that before they come down on us?

And this seems like a pretty solid strategy to me. Like this seems like a good thing. Like, you know, Apple can then go to, you know, the EU can come to Apple and Apple can be like, well, well look at this, you know, it is now far easier for people who have iPhones to leave and go to Android. Isn’t that great? Please leave us alone. So I think that’s the strategy. Which is fine by me because in that case the consumers win. Like, you know, there is no consumer disadvantage to anyone being able to easily leave Android to go to iOS or iOS to go to Android. Consumers only win in that scenario.

05:12 – Mishaal Rahman: So of these five data transfer types—so accessibility settings, music playlists, passwords and passkeys, wallet cards, and Wi-Fi credentials—keep in mind that these are all that we think that they are adding support for transferring, there could be more or could be none of these. Which of these do you think is going to be the most impactful for the end user?

05:31 – C. Scott Brown: I would probably say the… I don’t know, you know? Like I think it’s more just all of it. Like it’s a pain to do anything, you know, the transfer of anything when it doesn’t happen seamlessly. For example, like the bank card thing sounds like it’d be really good, but I can only assume that you’re still going to have to enter in some sort of verification that that these bank cards are your bank cards and I can’t imagine that it’s just going to be I have my Google Wallet cards and then I, whoop, now they’re on my iPhone. Like I just can’t, like that’s just that’s a security nightmare waiting to happen. So there there’d have to be some sort of checks and balances on the iPhone side or on the Android side to show like, yes, I do actually own these cards, here’s my information and all that.

So, I guess what I’m saying is there’s already so much inconvenience built in to transferring from one thing to another. I think that anything that they can do to make it more streamlined is going to be better. I can’t yeah, obviously photos and videos, those are really important to people, messages, but I feel like that those transitions, you know, that transfer is already pretty set, so I don’t know. I think it’s just all of it. As much as we possibly can get.

06:50 – Mishaal Rahman: Yeah. And you know, Apple has long benefited from its walled garden approach, but you know globally, they don’t have the majority of the market share. So even though maybe in the US this might hurt them more than it benefits them because they do have a greater market share compared to Android, there are other markets where that’s not true. There are other markets where Android completely dominates in terms of market share. So this could benefit them more in those markets. So I can see it as a dual play where they want to stave off potential antitrust insight from the EU regulators or other other markets around the world that think okay Apple’s intentionally making it too difficult to change devices and that these are kind of basic settings that should be transferable between devices so you don’t have to you know be committed to one ecosystem for life basically.

And at the same time they see, okay, this is a way for us to gain some inroads and potentially get some market share from Android manufacturers from people who are looking to switch from Android to iOS. Because there will never be a lot of people who want to do that and all the people who want to switch from Android to iPhone. So it does benefit both platforms and I am glad to see that even if these may be like the lowest lower hanging fruit compared to some other settings and other services that currently aren’t transferable, it is still nice to see any kind of improvement between the cross-platform compatibility because it is, you know as phone reviewers, I don’t know about you but setting up a new phone is one of the most annoying things in the world for me. Because there’s just so many things you have to do, so many rituals you gotta take care of, so many things you gotta check off, so many checkboxes you gotta take off, all these apps you gotta restore and sign back into. It’s just a nightmare and I imagine that it is something that a lot of people put off. A lot of regular users put off because they don’t want to go through that hassle.

08:38 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah and one thing I want to touch on with this discussion is that you know Apple has been so closed off to this kind of thing for so long. But in my opinion, Apple shouldn’t be worried about this at all. Like let’s say it’s super easy to go from iOS to Android. Why would Apple be scared of that? Like why would Apple not want that? Because what Apple, what I would assume they would think is that the person’s going to leave iOS and go to Android and then be like, wow, this is not as good as iOS and then go back to iOS. So if Apple is scared that people are going to leave iOS and then not come back, what does that say about iOS? You know like is Apple really confident that people can leave?

So it’s almost like that old saying like if you love something set it free, you know? It’s kind of a similar thing with this transfer thing. If Apple, if you’re super confident that iOS is the best operating system and is attached to the best mobile phone, open the doors, let people out, and let them discover and say like, wow, like Android’s garbage, like I gotta get out of here and go back to iOS. And if you’re afraid they’re not going to do that, then what does that really say about iOS? So yeah, so I think that it’s in Apple’s best interest to allow this to happen because this will put it to the test. Like is it really better at iOS? Well go and find out and you know here you go here’s the keys go do it. So yeah we’ll be interesting to see how this pans out for Apple.

10:15 – Mishaal Rahman: And speaking of putting things to the test, Scott, you the week before Google made its big second Android XR announcement, you went to Mountain View and you actually got to try out all the new hardware, all the new prototype XR glasses that Google had to show off and that they will be announcing and releasing next year. So I kind of want to just throw it to you. Like what exactly did you try out? What did Google announce? Like what did you see?

10:40 – C. Scott Brown: So Google showed me prototypes of devices running Android XR. And unfortunately, they did not let me photograph the prototypes, but you don’t have to just… I can tell you right now they looked just like Metas. They looked just like Meta Ray-Bans. They’re the Wayfarer style glasses. They have thick black frames. They have two cameras, one here, one here. There’s speakers on the stems that fire into your ears. Like it’s all the same stuff. So the fact that Google wouldn’t let me photograph them doesn’t really matter because you already know what they look like. They look like all the other smart glasses you’ve seen so far.

What was different though obviously is that they run Android XR. And this was such a dramatic shift away from everything that I’ve seen from smart glasses so far. The way Google is integrating Android XR into this wearable experience is just unbelievably good. Like unbelievably good. Their prototypes, so they’re obviously rough around the edges, but even then I immediately saw how these glasses could integrate into someone’s life immediately. You take them out of the box you put them on and you’re ready to go.

And it was so much easier to use than Meta’s glasses. For people who maybe don’t know, the newest Meta glasses are a monocular system. So in other words there’s one display in one of the lenses and then the other lens is just, you know, just a lens. And in order to control the operating system that you visually see in this one lens you have a wristband. It’s called the Neural Band. And that allows you to do gestures in the air like this and swipe things around and pick things and whatever. So you have to wear this wristband to control the operating system. And the operating system is very phone-like. You know it’s very colorful. Lots of buttons. Lots of things to push and trigger and swipe and all that stuff.

And Google is saying that is bad. And is doing the exact opposite. Android XR on these glasses is incredibly simplistic. The most minimalistic thing that I’ve ever seen Google do. Like there is nothing on the display. It’s just the core information that you need and then that’s it. And I think this is smart. Like the idea that you’d have this phone operating system on your face is incredibly distracting. You know if I’m having a conversation with somebody and I’m trying to like, you know, I get a text message and this big colorful text message pops in and you know whatever. That’s incredibly distracting. But on Android XR you have that conversation and you just, you know, this little white text comes in the side and says this is the message you got and then it just goes away.

So yeah so Google’s being very deliberate about what they’re trying to do with these glasses. And it was great. So anyway there’s a monocular glasses, so one lens, and then there is an audio only version. So it’s just lenses, just no visuals whatsoever, just audio stuff. And those are both coming out in 2026. They’re going to be made in partnership with Samsung and traditional glasses companies known as Gentle Monster and Warby Parker, which you probably have heard of. And then in the far future there is going to be a binocular version, which obviously means two two lenses, which will allow you to create the illusion of depth in what you’re seeing through the lenses. Those won’t come until 2027 or later. So yeah so really exciting. 2026 is going to be a big year for wearable you know smart glasses experience and I think Google is going to be at the forefront of it all.

14:24 – Mishaal Rahman: Hold on a second. Isn’t there another kind of glasses like the Project Aura? What about those?

14:28 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah so Project Aura is very different and there’s been some confusion about this. So Project Aura is made by a company called XREAL in partnership with Google. And really they’re just the Galaxy XR, you know the full-on VR headset, they’re just that pared down to glasses. So they have a cable that runs out of the stem into a smartphone size puck so you’ll be carrying around this puck thing that’s wired into your glasses at all times. And the lenses are thick. Like you know I would say probably about as thick as an earbuds case. Like they’re very thick on your face.

And then they basically are a one-to-one recreation of the Galaxy XR. So it’s you know full-on Android XR experience, full color visuals, you can play all the games, you can do all the things that you would do. It’s a VR experience basically but in these really thick glasses. They are not designed for living your life, walking around, going to a cafe, walking from one place to the other, getting directions, whatever. They are designed to be sitting on a couch or what what XReal is really planning on, sitting on a plane, sitting on a train, you know getting from one place to the other and you want to have you know an immersive VR experience that’s much more portable but not as big and immersive as something like Galaxy XR. So like an in-between zone. So they are very different and they are also coming in 2026 but yeah I would say most people would want a Galaxy XR because they’re going to get better battery life and it’s going to be fully immersive. You’re not going to have like the outside world kind of like around you as you use them. Whereas the XReal glasses, the Project Aura, is going to be like a hybrid, an in-between. Like okay you don’t want glasses you wear all day but you also don’t want a headset, here you go, here’s a more portable version of the Galaxy XR.

It did work. I tried them out for a little while and it was fun. They were fun to use. The puck got kind of hot. It comes with a belt clip so you can clip it to your belt instead of putting it in your pocket. And yeah if I had that thing in my pocket it would have been uncomfortable. So yeah so it’s a prototype. It’s got a ways to go but yeah it worked. It was the Galaxy XR experience on glasses. So.

16:50 – Mishaal Rahman: All right, very interesting. I mean I only had a brief opportunity to try I think the monocular lens prototype at Google I/O.

16:58 – C. Scott Brown: For like 90 seconds right? 

17:00 – Mishaal Rahman: Yeah for like 90 seconds. I didn’t get the full rundown of everything that it could do. But I kind of wanted to hear your thoughts on something else. So you brought up earlier that one reason why you think that Google’s Android XR experience is better than Meta’s is that it’s less distracting. You know you have kind of like that little pop-up that shows you the notification versus like the full screen display where you control things with the wristband or whatever they call it. But I think in your article, your hands-on, you mentioned another reason why you think that Google’s approach is better. And it has to do with how developers add support for Android XR applications for Android XR experiences. Can you tell us a little bit about what makes Google’s approach better?

17:36 – C. Scott Brown: So Meta, if you buy a pair of these Meta glasses, the operating system only supports Meta apps at the moment. The only exception to this is Spotify I believe. Spotify has an app on these glasses. But everything else is Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook. So if you want to have a chat with someone on your glasses and get notifications and do all those types of things, it all has to be through Meta properties. This is obviously bad. Like you know even if you’re not one of those people who hates Meta and obviously I’m sure a lot of people listening to this podcast hate Meta. Even if you don’t hate Meta though, the idea that you can’t have all the apps that you want you know on your glasses is bad.

Google’s strategy is to not use apps at all. So what they’re doing is your phone is the brains of the operation and your phone’s notification system is the app. So it’s kind of hard to explain but okay so imagine you’re listening to music on your phone you know and you pull down your notification dropdown and at the top you’ll have a music player. Whether you’re listening to YouTube Music or Spotify or whatever you have that music player. And it all always looks the same. You know it has the same design, the same core features, same buttons are in the same place whatever. That is the app. So what happens is that notification then becomes a persistent notification on your eyes and you can see that experience.

Same thing with Uber. So let’s say you get an Uber and you have that persistent notification in your dropdown. That is the app that appears in your glasses. So really there is no… you’re going to take these glasses out of the box, put them on your face, and you’re already going to have apps. You’re already going to have the experiences because they’re already going to be on your phone. And developers only need to add like I think it was like three API hooks or something. It’s like it’s a crazy small amount of code that they have to add to their apps to make this work. So really like the sky’s the limit. Like any app developer could make an app that appears in your glasses within a day. Maybe let’s say a week. Within a week of these glasses coming out there could be hundreds if not thousands of experiences through the apps you already have installed on your phone.

Way way different than what Meta is doing and way better because yeah it’s not you’re not going to have to go to Meta and be like hey Meta I have an app I want to use it on these glasses you know can I do that? And Meta strokes its chin and says yeah sure okay we can do that you know and then six months later there’s an app. With Google it’s like here the API hooks put them in your app boom glasses. So like it’s going to be a game changer. Like no waiting, no having to wait until there’s an app store that has a bunch of apps that you want to use, no re-downloading the apps that you already have on your phone. It just works. It’s going to be so cool.

20:36 – Mishaal Rahman: Interesting. I kind of wonder what’s preventing Meta from just copying that approach because from my understanding the Meta Ray-Ban displays it basically does most of the computing at least most of the processing like a lot of data collection still happens on your phone like through the companion applications. Like obviously those glasses they are not actually tracking your location as you’re walking around. They don’t have GPS built-in or a mobile data chipset to actually track your location from satellites right? Your phone does that. And all the Meta Ray-Ban companion app does is like it beams that location data and then it shows that on the glasses interface.

Maybe they could do something similar with their companion app. Maybe their companion app could implement something to listen and scrape notifications from like Uber or your music player and then they could do something similar to what Google’s doing with Android XR. I kind of wonder if they’ll just update the Ray-Ban to do something like that. Although I don’t know if something similar would be possible on the iOS side of things just because I’m not as familiar with the kind of limitations with the notifications APIs they have there. But I feel like this is something that Meta could also do. But at the same time they would be relying on a competitor’s operating system to provide them functionality they need to make their glasses work great. Which as you know they have no control over. They can’t really decide what developers have to add to to integrate into their applications to make their notifications look nice on their glasses versus Google you know they have the operating system on both the glasses and smartphones. They can kind of integrate both quite nicely. They can make changes to the core operating system to make things look really well on the XR glasses. But who knows. I do think that is a more clever approach, a better approach than what Meta has which is just like full screen apps on your face. I definitely think it’s a lot better to just have these contextual information that’s basically pulled from notifications. So yeah I agree that that’s a much better approach than what we have right now.

22:30 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah and I think to go back to what you were talking about with Meta like Meta it might just be Meta wants the control, you know? Like they want the control of that data. They want the control of the operating system. They want to, you know, they want to be strict about what happens on these glasses. And Google is much more just like yeah we’re giving you the operating system and what experiences app developers come up with is going to be fine with us because it’s all just based on these notifications. And of course you know you mentioned like oh well Meta could do this and scrape notifications or whatever but I feel like Google has no incentive to help Meta do this. Like because Google will just be like well why don’t you just use Android XR? Like you know we’re giving you an entire operating system that you could use and you’re using your own so go for it do whatever you got to do but if you want our help your best option is to just use Android XR. Which of course Meta would not want to do. So yeah Meta is kind of digging themselves into a little bit of a hole there. But we’ll see you know I could be totally wrong. It could be that people want an app experience. They want to be able to navigate through a glasses display, launch an app, do the things that they would normally do on a phone just on their eyes and the Android XR experience of having notifications that you can interact with that are based on the notifications on your phone might be too anemic. They’re like this isn’t powerful enough this isn’t what I want. I could be wrong. From my experience using them though I was like this is the way. But you know we’ll see what happens in 2026.

24:08 – Mishaal Rahman: Well I mean even if Android XR’s approach to notifications and the UI is technically superior, you know we all saw what happens that even if Google makes a technically superior product like with Google Glass which a lot of people think now in hindsight was way ahead of its time, it kind of flopped and got a bad reputation from the public because people you know didn’t really like the idea of having a computer on your face. Well fast forward to today, Meta has seen great success with the Ray-Ban brand and partnership. Do we think Google now relaunching you know bringing glasses back to the public, do you think they have a better shot now? Do you think they’ll actually see as widespread success as Meta is seeing now? Do you think their partnerships with traditional glasses brands like Warby Parker and Gentle Monster will help them a lot? Or like what do you think, what do you see will happen with the Android XR launch?

24:54 – C. Scott Brown: I think there’s going to be a period of time, it could be a year, could be two years, I don’t know, but there’s going to be a period of time where people are going to outright reject smart glasses like this. We are already seeing it. We’re already seeing – I saw an article just yesterday about a cruise line that is banning smart glasses. So it’s just like if you step onto this ship you have to take those glasses off. And you know people are concerned about the same things they were concerned about with Google Glass. Like somebody’s walking around, they have glasses on, you can’t really tell, are they smart glasses, are they not, and that person’s recording you and you just have no idea. At least with a phone if someone’s recording you can see they’ve got the phone in their hand and you can see that they’re recording you and you can cover your face or walk away or whatever. But with the smart glasses you have no idea until you’re right up on top of them and then you know you see the little LED light or whatever and you’re like oh I’m being recorded by that person and I had no idea.

So you know people are going to have to get used to that or they’re not. You know that might happen too. This might be a bridge too far for some people. They might just be like, no, like if you have smart glasses on you’re not welcome here. You’re not welcome on this cruise ship. You’re not welcome in this coffee shop. You’re not welcome at this theater or whatever you know. That just might be what we end up doing. We might draw a hard line and in that case you know Meta and Google and and all the other companies that are trying to make these things happen will have to figure out what to do then. But yeah I don’t know. Things have changed since Google Glass. Google Glass was over 10 years ago. You know a lot has changed. People have a very different perception of what privacy means now than they did when Google Glass came out. And so yeah I don’t know it’s going to be an interesting thing to see.

Google to its credit is very aware of this. I had a very long conversation with Google representatives at the Android XR demo talking about privacy and talking about Google Glass and the problems that they had. And Google is very aware of it. They’re still not completely set on what they’re going to do to convince people that this product is good and is something that they should get comfortable with. They’re still trying to figure that out. But you know they’re doing the core privacy things. There’s a switch on the glasses when you switch it off it turns red you know so people can visually see as they look at you that the glasses are not on. There’s an LED that’s on when you’re recording something and if you try to cover up the LED the cameras don’t work. These are things that we’ve seen on other smart glasses so this is not innovation that Google is doing but Google is doing the industry minimum right now to make these as accepted as possible by the general public.

But in the end it’s just going to be like smartphones. People are going to say they’re going to say is it worth sacrificing some of my privacy to have this computer in my pocket? And they’re going to have to make the same call. Like is it worth the sacrifices to privacy to have this heads up display that I can take anywhere I go? And I don’t know. We’ll see how it goes. I think that people are going to get into it. I think that two years from now smart glasses are going to be much much more popular than they are right now and it’s going to be much more accepted than it is. But I could be wrong. People could outright reject this. I don’t know. We’re going to have to wait and see.

28:18 – Mishaal Rahman: I’m also curious to see which form factor in particular is going to really kick off. You know we’ve seen Meta, they’re seeing the greatest success right now with their audio only Ray-Ban like you know the displayless one. Google is launching four different categories. They’re also launching audio only. They’re doing monocular. They’re doing binocular. And then they’re doing the full standalone kind of tethered Project Aura XR glasses. So I’m curious to see which one will be the most successful. My bet is the audio only ones will be the king because they’re just going to be the cheapest ones. Those are the most entry level mass market ones. The monocular ones I see being kind of like the most successful middle ground one because they give you all the benefits of the audio only one but those extra features that you just can’t get with an audio only experience like the notifications the maps directions on the screen your music player things like that. I don’t really see the – I guess like we didn’t really see any demos we didn’t get any hands on with the binocular prototypes right? Like they didn’t show you anything with that. But I can’t really imagine…

29:17 – C. Scott Brown: They did. Yeah. It was very brief. And all I saw was Maps. They showed me the Maps display but the Maps had depth. So instead of just being a flat map that you could see like your location and navigation instructions the maps actually had depth to them. Which was cool but like you’re saying it wasn’t…

29:39 – Mishaal Rahman: Not like a game changer.

29:41 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah it was not. So yeah I agree. I don’t see the binocular ones being as big of a hit as the audio only and the monoculars.

29:51 – Mishaal Rahman: Well who knows we still have until 2027 for those to come out. Maybe they’ll wow us with some other product demo showing off what those binocular glasses can actually do.

And our final story for today is a discovery that Google is working on bringing back NFC-based contact sharing. So our resident APK teardown specialist AssembleDebug found evidence in the Google Play Services app that Google was working on a feature called Contact Exchange. And it could be the Android equivalent to iOS’s NameDrop feature. So for those who don’t know, iOS devices have this feature where you can tap two iPhones together at the very top and it’ll play this kind of neat animation where going like like liquid flowing from one device to another it kind of beams the contact from one device to another. It looks really cool admittedly. Like they did a lot of amazing work in nailing the animations and the UI for actually transferring uh contact data.

But the funny thing is Android devices and smartphones in general have had NFC-based contact sharing for a very long time. It just wasn’t very popular. You know we had as Scott mentioned at the top of the show we had that what was that application called? Bu- was it called? Bump. Bump from 2011. Yeah. Where you literally just tap two phones together and it transfers contact data. Like it’s a very simple thing but it worked. But over time it kind of lost its luster. People weren’t really interested in bumping their phones together as much as they used to anymore. And even the generic Android data transfer feature that used NFC to transfer information, Android Beam, was eventually deprecated. You can’t use Android Beam anymore to transfer data. Now everything is done by Quick Share.

But it looks like because of the popularity of NameDrop, Google might be looking to bring back a similar feature and they’re calling it as I mentioned Contact Exchange. And we actually got kind of a demo of this feature within the latest version of the Play Services app. So we can kind of see in this video that AssembleDebug recorded. Well let me mute the audio there. That as he taps the phones together it kind of plays this little animation at the very top where you can see this ripple effect. And we don’t actually have the feature fully working so we don’t know exactly we don’t show like we don’t have the pop-up that shows you know what contact data you’ll be able to share. But very likely you will pick the specific information that you’re sharing with your contact and yeah as you can see here you can select the kind of information you’re sharing and you have to confirm before you actually share it. So very similar to NameDrop.

But because of the vast differences in the antenna array placement, NFC antenna array placement on Android phones, exactly where you’re going to be tapping two phones together will probably be very different depending on the devices that you’re actually trying to transfer contacts between. So it’ll be interesting to see how this how this actually works out on Android devices whether or not people will actually be using it because you know I don’t really know that many people who actively use NameDrop on iOS. I’m sure it’s popular enough but you know I always just share contact information by just sharing the contact card on like Telegram or Messages or email or something. You know it’s a very simple thing it’s been around for ages and it just works across every device that you use it on. So what do you think of this feature Scott? Do you think people will actually be using this Contact Exchange feature? Do you think people will actually go back to bumping their Android phones together to share contact information?

33:17 – C. Scott Brown: You know it’s to me it’s the contact information that’s the kind of uninteresting thing about it. Like yeah like bumping phones together to share contact information I can think of like a handful of situations that I’m in every year where that would be something I’d be like oh that would be really helpful right now. Because you know you’re at a conference and I meet someone and they’re like oh you know I’m so and so from so and such company we should talk about you know an article or a video or whatever and I’d be like oh cool yeah let’s stay in touch and then oh hey this is convenient [sound effect] and we bump our phones together and share contact info. Like that’s cool but that happens four or five times a year. You know so it’s not that big of a deal.

What this is missing is the ability to share things that you actually want to share with someone which would be a photo or a video. That’s what I want to see. Like I want to be able to you know be at a party take a photo of my friends or whatever and then be like oh here you guys want it you know just bump from phone to phone and everyone gets the photo. Like that’s what I want. That would be something that I think people would get really excited about. Because yeah bumping two phones together to share something is a great idea but the unsexy thing about it is that you’re sharing contact information which is just not something people are like ooh that’s so exciting you know whereas photos and videos that would be that would be much much more cool.

34:43 – Mishaal Rahman: Yeah I know in Quick Share there’s actually like a hidden feature where if you both have Quick Share open and you kind of tap them together it automatically starts and completes the pairing process and transfers a file. It would be kind of cool if the person who wants to share the file they’re the only ones who have to have Quick Share open and you just go around tapping other people’s phones and it just instantly starts sharing it with them. That would be really cool to have. I don’t even know if that’s possible right now but if it is today I learned or today you learned.

35:08 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah.

35:11 – Mishaal Rahman: But the issue of course is that even if this does end up working between Android phones will it ever work between Android and iOS devices and right…

35:23 – C. Scott Brown: I mean we have AirDrop now. So you know…

35:27 – Mishaal Rahman: We have AirDrop now but without Apple’s consent we have AirDrop. But are we going to get NameDrop without Apple’s consent? Maybe Google if you’re working on it maybe they have a trick up their sleeve to make that happen in the near future who knows.

35:41 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah I mean I we talked about this in the episode where we talked about the AirDrop thing happening is like this is a great idea for everyone. You know if once again going back to what I was just talking about being at a party. I’m at a party. I take a photo of a group and they’re like oh can I have that photo? It shouldn’t matter what phone they use. You know I should just be able to boop boop boop boop everyone gets the photo. Because it’s in Apple’s best interest to do that. Because what’s going to happen is that group I take a photo let’s say I take a photo of 10 people and five of those people are Android users and five are iPhone users. I am an Android user so I bump the Android people and then I say to iPhone users sorry you’re out of luck you’ll have to get this photo some other way. You know if I remember after the party I’ll email it to you or whatever or like whatever the situation might be. So yeah it’s in Apple’s best interest to make this work. So I don’t know why they would fight it but you know once again that’s Apple’s like thing it’s always fighting interoperability for some reason. Even though it’s what their users want. So yeah. But yeah I think this concept of bumping two phones together makes perfect sense. It’s very intuitive. You know it’s just a matter of what is getting shared and how it’s going to work across devices that’s the real killer.

37:03 – Mishaal Rahman: Yeah. And I mean fortunately at least contact information from what I can tell is pretty standardized. There’s not that many contacts platforms out there. You know you have Apple Contacts, Samsung Contacts, Google Contacts and they all support as far as I can tell importing contacts databases. So like it’s pretty standardized it’s not very difficult to create a contacts card and share it between operating systems and platforms. It’s just whether or not the platform itself will accept you know once you tap two phones together you know Apple phones have NFC, Android phones have NFC, what will actually happen when you tap them together. You know will they actually initiate the contact sharing process is the question. And right now that’s not going to happen unless both Apple and Google work together to make it happen. But as we saw, sometimes they will work together to make things happen like this new cross-platform data exchange thing that we talked about at the beginning of the show. Other times Google really has to force it to happen like with the AirDrop thing and with you know the RCS kind of getting Apple to get the message which they eventually did get the message and they have added RCS support. You know it took a while but it eventually did happen but it’s going to be interesting to see if Google can also get Apple on board with implementing NameDrop across iOS and Android devices.

38:25 – Mishaal Rahman: Okay. And that’s everything we’ve got for you this week. You can find links to all the stories mentioned in this episode down in the show notes and you can find more amazing stories to read over on AndroidAuthority.com.

38:35 – C. Scott Brown: Thanks for listening to the Authority Insights podcast. We publish every week on YouTube, Spotify, and other podcast platforms. You can follow us everywhere on social media @AndroidAuthority and you can follow me personally on Instagram, Bluesky, and my own YouTube channel @CScottBrown.

38:52 – Mishaal Rahman: As for me, I’m on most social media platforms posting day in and day out about Android. If you want to keep up with the latest in Android news follow me on X, Threads, Mastodon, or Telegram at MishaalRahman. Thanks for listening.