Gadgetory

so you're out with some friends and you take a photo and they ask you to share it with them but they use a different OS how do you send it I'm Taylor Martin this is PocketNow and this is how you share pictures across mobile platforms taking photos and sharing them instantly has become the new way of being social you're out with your friends and you want the world to know what you're doing to see what you see but it never fails you snap an awesome shot and your friend says hey send that picture to me and it's at that point when the fabric of the universe begins to tear because sharing a small file between two devices mere inches apart can sometimes be insanely overcomplicated it's even worse if you don't use the same mobile OS as your friend yes an iPhone you have an Android device and a third friend who also wants the picture just so happens to have a Windows Phone suddenly you might as well be around the world from one another because sharing that one photo which is probably only a megabyte or two is no simple task if your friend also has an Android phone with NFC they could simply tap the back of their phone to yours and the photo would transfer using Wi-Fi direct or Bluetooth the NFC chip acts as a proverbial handshake between the devices that initiates a transfer you can share small files between Android and Windows Phone using NFC such as URLs but not large files the photo transfer is not compatible and no iOS devices to date come equipped with NFC so there's that you could MMS or email some photos to your friends compose inner recipient or to choose the images and send the files transfer practically around the globe and land two feet away on your friends phones it works but it's archaic and it uses precious data that could be saved by a local Bluetooth or Wi-Fi transfer oh yes bluetooth you can pair your phone to your friend's phone assuming you're using Android and Windows Phone and send files but it has its own set of problems you have to pair the phones you only have to do it once and after setting it up the first time it's a very simple process turn on Bluetooth connect the phones choose the files and send the transfer can sometimes take a while and it just feels like a hacked way of doing things especially since the NFC handshake could seriously add some polish to the process not to mention it doesn't natively work with iOS if you have more than one photo to share there's another option that well works but again it needlessly uses your data cloud storage most pictures ever taken with my phones are sent to Google Plus and Dropbox but I have it set to only automatically upload over Wi-Fi and a pinch you can upload a select set of images to cloud storage and share the link with your friends the problem with this is the application support Dropbox box copy Drive and a slew of other cloud storage options are only officially available on iOS and Android but official clients for these are not readily available to Windows Phone third-party clients are available and they sometimes work but the experience is often far below that of the official app for instance file box for Windows Phone is a Dropbox client but you can only batch upload all photos in your camera roll or upload one file at a time and you can only download files one at a time this method like all others is hit or miss and our third-party file sharing clients for iOS and Android such as bump or hacker these works sort of like the NFC handshake but do not have the hardware requirements again with no support for Windows Phone this may not be the best option and in our experience it's not always the most reliable method phone safety issues aside what's our point in debunking all the available methods to point out a few things one cross-platform photo sharing which is important to many is antiquated it's far more difficult than it needs to be or should be I shouldn't have to send my photos to a remote server to share them with someone I can reach out and touch yes some OEMs have innovated ways to share images with people nearby if they use the same OS and sometimes even the same brand device galaxy to galaxy droid to droid but what about iPhone to Windows Phone Windows Phone to Android or Android iPhone there are ways to make it happen but all of it fills circa 2000 it's 2013 and we're still hand turning cogs to share a few megabytes to someone a few feet away so we ask you how do you share your pictures with friends who use different operating systems Android to Android I use NFC and I typically use Dropbox or email since those don't require any action from the other parties but there isn't a single method that actually like to use that's going to wrap this video up if you enjoyed it be sure to click the thumbs up button below to let us know and subscribe to see more videos in the future you can find us on Twitter Google+ and Facebook at pocket now I'm Taylor Martin you can find me on twitter at casper tech and i will see you next time