First things first, I am writing this question after researching quite a bit.
Broader View of the issue
In this day and age, we require a more reliable way to perform peer-to-peer communication, preferably using technologies like NFC.
I mean we are in the year 2018 and I cannot believe that there isn't reliable means to communicate peer-peer between and ios and an android. I am talking about offline, close proximity/range communication, which can open up a new world of possibilities for mobile apps. Many of the apps we use to communicate with other devices require one or more of internet, login, credentials/authentication, etc. I am making this effort because most of the readers/users/developers do not actually know what has changed in 2018, so if anythings changed, I would love to hear it!
Hindrances
IOS has very weak NFC support, functionality-wise..?
IOS doesn't support Android Beam.
Not enough members are bothered to fix this or are helpless.
IOS doesn't support non-ios Bluetooth connection? (Doubt it/Tried but failed)
What I need
Efficient cross platform solution for communication between two different mobile devices preferably offline.
A way to send and receive money other than Apple Pay/GPay/Samsung Pay/iMessage/AndroidMessages, such as over NFC/Bluetooth preferably offline mutually, but connected to internet independently.
A way to automatically send data when two devices (different platforms and within ios) are in close proximity, without the need to login or register or any other steps. At least a way to trigger something upon nearing one device from the other, like NFC basically.
What I have
Working android application that uses android Beam to send and receive ndef messages, which is easy to do, between two android devices. So we can make the payment happen here in this case.
Questions arise when we try to proceed with android -> ios or vice versa.
I have read a lot of related questions where the answer is outright NO. However, am not taking time to write this question to be told it's not possible. I want the crowd here on stack overflow to help me find a way to workaround this situation. I know it is a lot to ask, but I feel this invention or discovery will help man app developers stuck in this same zone. This question should be answerable by someone who is ideally in the Fintech domain, and is an IOS developer or mobile developer, with working knowledge of card emulation, secure element, ios 11+ or ios 12 development, NFC, NFC tags, etc.
Questions/Ideas:
Can we use the secure element and NFC Tag with ios 12 or ios 11+ libraries to simulate this required functionality?
Does any third-party library get close to having the ios/iphone act like a NFC writer?
Can we simulate NFC writer for ios?
Can I simulate a tag on android device, have the iphone read it(do not want the apple pay popup somehow) and then follow through the next workflow via the internet? For example, if I had a sender and receiver (payments), since android supports a lot more than ios, can I simulate something on android so that either the apple pay thinks am a terminal of sorts and pays me electronically (securely of course), or at the least can I read apple pay credentials of sorts and simulate a terminal and accept a payment from ios on android?
Something on these lines, I know its not very clear, though I am trying to be clear and simple.
Suggested by others and why it is not a great solution:
WebRTC - Needs internet
alljoyn - Need only 2 device not 2+ and no need for server or client setup.
Relay Server not quite sure is offline or works
android-ios-peer-to-peer-architecture question talks a lot about it as well!
developing-mobile-p2p-payment-apps question, which seems to be relevant has NO answer.
why-android-ios11-cannot-communicate-via-nfc question talks about React Native. I for one have looked at PhoneGap and Nativescript which just have the same level of support for ios. In short, it won't work.
Any I left out, in short no solution.
Comments:
//Due to the fact that there is no solution, I feel even more motivated to post this question. I feel we should come together as one and fight for this right. I mean usually seemingly impossible questions are answered here, so I figured you guys could take this as a challenge. The challenge would be to find a legal loophole, an ethical approach, nothing unethical of sorts. So let me know if we can arrive at any positive conclusion! Thank you for being patient.
//I have read the rules and "do not ask" section, so I would just request moderators to check if there *can* be any answer before you flag it or take it down, by which I mean we just need one correct answer, and it can come from anyone or anywhere.
I am pleased to reveal that there has been demand for this and Google has released Nearby API as early as 2016. This is the way to move forward. This is a device independent API.
Please checkout Monzo Bank's Nearby Pay
Google and others claim it works with Ios as well.
It has been around since 2-3 years, which means there should be good support and documentation, though I might be wrong.
I hope this answer paves the way for others in my position! Good Luck!
I am unable to use the right terminology to search else if this is already answered i would not have posted.
Pls comment if silly question , I will take it off. do not vote down pls. :( a rookie
I am trying to setup a server where I can host an android environment and let users test their apps. Something like a cloud ?. I wanna see if I can host various flavors of Android so that I can test from another machine. Is it possible? what to use.
May be run a few Independent simulators on a server ?
Yes, lots of companies do things like this to run their own build server. There are also many services that allow you to do such things on their servers (i.e. circleci). Google around and you will find a lot of stuff.
I was wondering if anyone in the stackoverflow community could point out some cloud based testing tools for android. I would like to be able to test my applications on real devices that I dont have access to and get the full logcat and other data associated with testing. I know there are a lot out there but I would like to hear other peoples experiences with them before I go spending any time or money on trying them out. A quick google search brings up testdroid.com but I have heard of countless others that I couldnt find in the top couple of pages.
Any comments on the matter would be greatly appreciated.
Have a look to this website : http://testdroid.com/
Never built an app before.
Downloaded & installed SDK & Eclipse.
For my 'learning experience' I would like to build an app for my Galaxy S II (4.0.4) that will take me to a web site and then log me in, eg: my Gmail Account or my Voip.ms Account
Can someone point me to a tutorial or suggest how I should start such an app?
Is this too complicated to begin with?
Personally, I think this is way too complicated to start as a learner. You may end up spending a lot more time in debugging some code which does not work because of some silly stuff rather than "learning" how to code Android.
I started with a simple app that has few screens, stores some info in local SQLite DB and sends some across to an remote SQL Server over internet. I managed to complete this in 2 weeks and got quite a good hold on Android basics. Now I am working on a much complex app and am not getting stuck in fundamental issues.
Developer.android.com offers some good app examples and tutorials and is the first go-to location when you want to see how to do something Android-related.
As for what you want to do, it will really depend on the website. Going to the website in question, searching for a developer section is the way to go.
There they will explain which API they offer to devs. OAuth + REST are widely adopted but there is no universal solution, it really depends on the website.
A final note : embedding a webpage in an Android app is a very bad idea from an user-experience perspective, Using an API to offer a native app will always result in a better experience.
Is there any collaborative development site specifically having Android application developers collaborating?
I have looked into the GITHUB. But dint got anything usefull.
Any pointers will be helpfull.
Thanks,
Gamdroid
Each project has its own means of collaboration. Your best bet is to find a project you want to work on, visit its irc channel or join its mailing lists, and engage its community.
Even when you work with others on open source projects, you still do the majority of the work on your own. Usually collaboration only goes as far as submitting patches to the project managers.
If you're looking for a place to get help in real-time, you might try Stackoverflow chat or #android-dev on freenode irc.