Apps Phone to phone communication

[cp123127]

Does anyone know of a way to have two android phones communicate directly to each other without the use of a central server? (i.e. gmail.com)
There is, of course, bluetooth communication between phones already, but I was thinking of something using wifi because it is faster, more secure, and has a larger range.
I'm thinking of writing an app to this effect that would enable two or more android phones to share files, chat, or call each other even when out of range of wifi or cell towers. It might even be possible to bounce signals off other enabled phones to increase this range.

 

[GODMODE]

That sounds like quite the radical idea. Like distributed phoning :-D

 

[samuelmaskell]

that would be so awesome..

 

[Radzell]

What your saying would have to make on android put out a signal as well as some other things that router do for configuring. I recommend looking at iphone tether which is kinda what your doing if you want help with the project email me at basketballdeon@gmail.com i love programming in groups.

 

[noonehereyet]

What your saying would have to make on android put out a signal as well as some other things that router do for configuring. I recommend looking at iphone tether which is kinda what your doing if you want help with the project email me at basketballdeon@gmail.com i love programming in groups.

there are dozens of apps that allow wifi, bluetooth and hardline tethering for android... as for phone to phone or phone to pc bluetooth this is your best bet Cyrket - Bluetooth Fileshare - Bluex for wifi tether use this android-wifi-tether - Google Code if your looking to use your phone as a server use this Cyrket - aFile

 

[KlaymenDK]

Edit: Don't take this post for gospel, it might not be accurate.

I'm not about to go and argue with a super moderator , but I think that all of the solutions mentioned above are for tethering the device to a pc; I don't think you can create a wi-fi link between two phones any more than you can two laptops.

The reason is that Ethernet (in the case of a wi-fi connection, but also some USB and Bluetooth devices) is basically using a star configuration where nodes need to connect to a hub -- you can only connect two nodes together if one of them can be made to act as a hub. Now, some devices are able to run in both hub and node modes (the OpenMoko comes to mind). I don't think Android and/or the current hardware supports this. Yet, anyway.

What I'm saying is that you need features in hardware, or at the very least in software, that just aren't available.

Disregarding all I've just said, it would be awesome to have any Android phone act as a wi-fi walkie-talkie!

 

[noonehereyet]

I'm not about to go and argue with a super moderator , but I think that all of the solutions mentioned above are for tethering the device to a pc; I don't think you can create a wi-fi link between two phones any more than you can two laptops.

The reason is that Ethernet (in the case of a wi-fi connection, but also some USB and Bluetooth devices) is basically using a star configuration where nodes need to connect to a hub -- you can only connect two nodes together if one of them can be made to act as a hub. Now, some devices are able to run in both hub and node modes (the OpenMoko comes to mind). I don't think Android and/or the current hardware supports this. Yet, anyway.

What I'm saying is that you need features in hardware, or at the very least in software, that just aren't available.

Disregarding all I've just said, it would be awesome to have any Android phone act as a wi-fi walkie-talkie!

not to bust your bubble man but if you had clicked on this link ( Cyrket - Bluetooth Fileshare - Bluex ) that i had posted above you would have seen the description which is :

Bluetooth Fileshare - Bluex
Xela AndroSoft

Price

 

[Scott]

[Most] laptops can direct-connect, because most can share their WIFI (P2P) and be connected directly to.

I do not believe any of the phones can run in Infrastructure mode like that, so your only options would be BT or something with a central server.

I have been kicking around the idea of a similar app, only something more akin to "omni-presense" for Android devices in general. I would use our server farm as a communication hub.

FWIW, servers are cheap; bandwidth is cheap.

Scott

 

[cp123127]

Noonehereyet, you're right in that a bluetooth version of this kind of direct peer to peer filesharing has been implemented, but I was more interested in wifi for the reasons listed above (especially range).
I guess I was envisioning a massive ad-hoc network of android phones much like this: Self Organizing Wireless Mesh Networks - Microsoft Research but with mobile phones.
I think until a native direct connection for android becomes available the best we could hope for is Radzell's idea of having an android node act as a router to accept connections while simultaneously having multiple wifi connections to other android nodes.
This said, I have no idea if the software exists that would let android phones open multiple wifi connections. As for acting as a router, there may be some apps originally meant for tethering that let an android act as a router.

 

[geocrav]

How about using the mobile phone's wireless hardware (not WiFi) to communicate phone to phone when out of the mobile network (like a real walkie talkie). Is this possible? This would be awesome.

 

[regulatre]

How about using the mobile phone's wireless hardware (not WiFi) to communicate phone to phone when out of the mobile network (like a real walkie talkie). Is this possible? This would be awesome.

Tuning the CDMA radio and sending and receiving data might be rather difficult unless someone reprogrammed the DSP and I've never heard of that being accomplished on any phone. If it was then it would be rather bad for everybody to have rogue transceivers on the spectrum talking to eachother rather than registering with the tower. =)

I liked the WiFi idea... What if an app used a specific SSID, AD-HOC mode, and broadcasted its presence at a regular interval. Other phones running the app could listen for those broadcasts and register the nearby users in a list. Then users could select someone from the list to talk (VOIP) or transfer data... The service could run in the background listening for nearby hosts, registering with them (alert user of their proximity?).

Just thinking out loud.

 

[wige]

Almost makes me miss the days of simple IR ports to share data...

But yes, it definitely sounds like what you are talking about would be setting up an ad-hoc network that any user could then connect to, creating almost a cloud. Unfortunately, at least on my Droid, it seems the phone is only capable of Infrastructure mode. Having a widget that could put the phone into an appropriate ad-hoc mode then share data would be a great feature, and could even bring back one of the nice networking features of the old IR-enabled PDAs - sharing virtual business cards.