Android: Connect two phones wirelessly?

Question

I'm interested in fleshing out an idea for a Android phone app, and I'm wondering if this is possible. So I would have the app running in the background on Phone A, then when it finds another Android phone B, it saves certain information like time, GPS location, just state variables.

But if the other phone is also running the same app, the two phones connect and share trivial non-private information.

Hypothetically, would this be possible? Would I go through a local ad-hoc Wi-Fi connection, or constantly broadcast Bluetooth?

Answer 1

Bluetooth is the easiest way for two phones to communicate directly with each other. However, both phones would have to be paired through the Settings->Wireless->Bluetooth menu. You would experience better range and speed with WiFi, but this requires a router as far as I know.

Answer 2

If both people have the same app, you could do it in a round about way. If two people installed the app on their phone and agreed to have their gps coordinates shared, you could upload both sets of gps coordinates to a server as the people move around. The server could then compare which people are close to each other. When the user wants to share information with another user, the phone just needs to ask the server who is in their vicinity and sharing could be done over the internet. This is essentially how Bump works. Bumping two phones together triggers a call to the server to see who else is bumping in that vicinity at the same time. After phones close by are discovered, you might be able to trigger bluetooth pairing and sharing if you don't want to share over the internet.