Android Nearby, Connections vs. Messages

Recently I’ve explored on connecting two devices in close proximity without need of using GPS. Android provide an excellent feature for that called Android Nearby. There are 3 variants of it, whereby Nearby Notifications is still are preliminary at the time of writing this. Anyway, Nearby Notification is clearly a beacon based notification, hence not relevant to what I’m looking for.

Hence the other 2, Nearby Connections and Nearby Messages, which to choose? After explored both, I’m listing what I found for the others to check out

Can your connection contain within local area network?

The Nearby Connection is only restrict to local area network (i.e. Wifi or Ethernet). If your application does want to connect across network. You’ll have to op for Nearby Messages. It uses Bluetooth, BLE, Wifi and also Ultrasonic Sound wave!!

Does it need to be cross platform?

The Nearby Connection from what was written, only limited to Android. But for Nearby Messages, there’s a Beta version of support for iOS. It uses the Ultrasonic Sound for the connection. What a neat idea!

The need to be linked using Google API

From the above two consideration, Nearby Messages is definitely more superior than Nearby Connections of it’s support. But one need to register and get an API key to use Nearby Messages. While Nearby Connection is…