After months of waiting and rumours, Google has finally confirmed that its AirDrop competitor will be launching itself in the market. Its new feature called the ‘Nearby Share’ is already seeing a response from the testing market and there are many who are trying out the Beta version.

We can imagine that there would be very few people who would not be familiar with Apple’s AirDrop feature, so this would not come as a surprise that it would serve the same function with Android phones. This means that you can quickly and effortlessly transfer files between Android Phones in close proximity. Android Police has also mentioned that this can be done for photos and videos as well.

Android Police, who also gets a hands-on with this feature, has also mentioned that it will not be possible to send anything random to a stranger. In order to use this application, one will have to have the feature installed and activated, through a quick settings option and make their phone visible, which will activate this feature. In addition to this, they would also have to manually accept a file while receiving it, before it opens.

This isn’t something entirely new to the competition to AirDrop. Samsung had come up with a similar feature called ‘Quick Share’ which basically allows you to send files to 5 friends. However, the difference between Nearby and Quick Share, is Quick Share currently operates only for Samsung devices.

Nearby Sharing has been built right into the settings menu. It still being in the Beta Testing phase, there are videos available, that still show failings as you try to send video files, however, once the transfer starts, the process is quite seamless. According to the feature, this works best, when two people are within a foot-distance from each other, however, you also have the option to restrict your device’s visibility, to ensure that you do not receive files from random strangers.

One of the biggest advantages of Nearly Sharing is that it will operate for all Android manufacturers, rather then being limited to a small group of them, like in the case of Samsung’s Quick Share. There is no official word on when this feature is going to be announced, however, since the beta testing has already started, one cannot expect it to be too far away.