Four Chinese OEMs including OnePlus and Realme join Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo’s file transfer alliance

In August 2019, three Chinese OEMs – Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo – partnered to create a peer to peer file transfer protocol. The protocol was meant to enable seamless cross-brand file transfer with just one click from one Android device to another.

The alliance dubbed “Peer-to-Peer Transmission Alliance”, brainstormed on developing a new cross-platform multi-sharing protocol that would be able to take over the gap left by the now-defunct Android Beam that was killed by Google in Android Q in preparation for a new transfer protocol.

The initial three founding members of the alliance, at the time of unveiling, announced that it was open to any OEM to join.

Few months after the official launch in some markets, four new OEMs have joined the consortium. The new entrants are OnePlus, Realme, Meizu, and Black Shark.

All of these are Chinese OEMs and it’s not a surprise that some have close links to some of the founding members. Realme was spined-off from Oppo, and Black Shark from Xiaomi. Oppo and Vivo, two of the co-founding members are under the same BBK Electronics umbrella, so it’s not surprising to see OnePlus join the bandwagon although they had their own proprietary transfer protocol.

The alliance now has a total of seven OEMs – all based in China.

The P2P protocol was launched in February in some markets enabling users to share files without third-party applications. The protocol can send different file types and even folders at average transfer speeds of 20MB/s.

The transfer protocol uses both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi P2P. Bluetooth is used for fast pairing and WiFi P2P (Peer to Peer) technology for the data transfer. This WiFi P2P tech does not interfere with your WiFi connection, whatsoever, so you’ll continue browsing or streaming whatever you like as the transfer proceeds.

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