Android
Beam
Android Beam is a popular NFC-based technology that lets
users instantly share, just by touching two NFC-enabled phones together. In
Android 4.1, Android Beam makes it easier to share images, videos, or other
payloads by leveraging Bluetooth for the data transfer. When the user triggers a transfer, Android Beam hands
over from NFC to Bluetooth, making it really easy to manage the transfer of a
file from one device to another.
Wi-Fi
Network Service Discovery
Android 4.1 introduces support for multicast DNS-based
service discovery, which lets
applications find and connect to services offered by peer devices over Wi-Fi
networks — including mobile devices, printers, cameras, media players, and
others. Developers can take advantage of Wi-Fi network service discovery to
build cross-platform or multiplayer games and application experiences.
Using the service discovery API, apps can create and
register any kind of service, for any other NSD-enabled device to discover. The
service is advertised by multicast across the network using a human-readable
string identifier, which lets user more easily identify the type of service.
Consumer devices can use the API to scan and discover
services available from devices connected to the local Wi-Fi network. After
discovery, apps can use the API to resolve the service to an IP address and
port through which it can establish a socket connection. You can take advantage
of this API to build new features into your apps. For example, you could let
users connect to a webcam, a printer, or an app on another mobile device that
supports Wi-Fi peer-to-peer connections.
Wi-Fi
Direct Service Discovery
Ice Cream Sandwich introduced support for Wi-Fi Direct, a
technology that lets apps discover and pair directly, over a high-bandwidth peer-to-peer connection. Wi-Fi
Direct is an ideal way to share media, photos, files and other types of data
and sessions, even where there is no cell network or Wi-Fi available. With
Jelly Bean, Android takes Wi-Fi Direct further, adding API support for pre-associated
service discovery. Pre-associated
service discovery lets your apps get more useful information from nearby
devices about the services they support, before they attempt to connect. Apps
can initiate discovery for a specific service and filter the list of discovered
devices to those that actually support the target service or application.
For example, this means that your app could discover only devices
that are “printers” or that have a specific game available, instead of
discovering all nearby Wi-Fi Direct devices. On the other hand, your app can
advertise the service it provides to other devices, which can discover it and
then negotiate a connection. This greatly simplifies discovery and pairing for
users and lets apps take advantage of Wi-Fi Direct more effectively. With Wi-Fi
Direct service discovery, you can create apps and multiplayer
games that can share photos, videos, game play, scores, or
almost anything else — all without requiring any Internet or mobile network.
Your users can connect using only a direct p2p connection, which avoids using
mobile bandwidth.
Network
Bandwidth Management
Android 4.1 helps apps manage data usage appropriately when the device is connected to a metered
network, including tethering to a mobile hotspot. Apps can
query whether the current network is metered before beginning a large download
that might otherwise be relatively expensive to the user. Through the API, you
can now get a clear picture of which networks are sensitive to data usage and
manage your network activity accordingly
ARTICLE
BY
R.HEMAMALINI
FINAL
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