Apple Patents iPhone-To-iPhone Transfers By Bumping Handsets Together

If you’re looking to transfer files from iPhone to another iPhone, there are various ways around that. For example you could send it over iMessage, share a Dropbox link, send it using WhatsApp, use Google Drive, or even use Apple’s proprietary transfer feature in the form of AirDrop.

However it seems that Apple could be thinking of creating another way of sharing files between iPhones, and that is through bumping devices together. This is according to a recently discovered patent which suggests that this could be a way of sharing files between iPhones, or possibly even use it to facilitate Apple Pay P2P payments.

If you’re wondering why this sounds so familiar, it is because in the early days of the iPhone and way before AirDrop was even introduced, there was an app called Bump. As the name suggests, the idea was that iPhone users could share data with each other by bumping their iPhones against each other.

However the app was later discontinued after Google acquired them. We’re not sure why Apple could still be thinking about using this method for data transfer, but then again it is a patent which means that there’s no guarantee that it will actually be made a reality.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Cellphones
Tags: iPhone, Patent