NFC: What is the difference between S-beam and Android beam?

Question

NFC: What is the difference between S-beam and Android beam? Can someone explain the exact flow of Wifi-Direct/Bluetooth getting activated and transferring the data?

Carpo

Refer to this android.stackexchange.com/questions/26509/… It's perfectly explained there :) – Alejandrinaalejandro

Thanks Max for the link, I did go through that ( and I was a bit aware of that), as the link speaks of the WifiDirect/Bluetooth, (and the Speed, wifi is faster than BT, furthermore to add in S-Beam can transfer bigger size data ), just want to know something more on that, can you please share more info. Any idea where I can get the code flow kind off... Thanks in advance – Carpo

Found something more, the S-Beam initialisation takes more time compared to Android beam. (But that guy didn't disclose the algo :( or any other useful info). Will keep exploring and updating – Carpo

Answer 1

Explained on stackexchanged....

Even though Android Beam and S Beam serve similar purposes, they actually work very differently and are not compatible with one another.

Android Beam uses NFC to pair your devices over Bluetooth, then transfers files over the Bluetooth connection. I believe it can also transfer very small pieces of data (contacts, links, etc) directly over NFC, as the Ice Cream Sandwich version highlights page implies:

For larger payloads, developers can even use Android Beam to initiate a connection and transfer the data over Bluetooth, without the need for user-visible pairing. S Beam, however, uses Wi-Fi Direct to perform data transfers instead of Bluetooth. Their reasoning for doing this is that Wi-Fi Direct offers faster transfer speeds (they quote up to 300 Mbps). Therefore, this will only work with other S Beam enabled devices, currently limiting it to communication between two Galaxy S3s.

However, the SGS3 also supports Android Beam, so you can use that to transfer something between a GNex and an SGS3. Here is a tutorial on Sprint's website (should be essentially the same for other versions of the SGS3).

Elgar