I’ve previously talked about Samsung’s exclusive QuickShare feature on several occasions — probably to the point of annoying you all! But what recently got me thinking is why Samsung updated the app and introduced new policies and restrictions. Now, in order to use QuickShare, both devices — the sender and the receiver — must have the feature enabled, along with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. This is required for each device to detect the other.
In the past, before this update, none of that was necessary. Any two Samsung devices using the same Samsung Account could detect each other simply by selecting “Share” on any file — even if QuickShare, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Nearby Devices were all completely turned off! Everything appeared to be off, yet it worked seamlessly.
I used to wonder what kind of technology could make devices with the same account detect each other like that. And of course, I was always testing with both devices right next to me. But recently, it randomly occurred to me: is proximity really a factor? Like, is it just limited to within a room? So I started testing with increasing distances between the devices — and I was shocked!
One device was in the east side of the place, the other in the west, with multiple walls and closed doors between them — and yet the other device appeared immediately as soon as I selected “Share”! How? No Wi-Fi or Bluetooth could cover that range, and even if Wi-Fi somehow could, the file transfer speed was insane — 10 GB transferred in about a minute and 15 seconds!
And if I used any third-party app on a device with everything supposedly turned off, it would correctly detect that those features were off. But clearly, not everything was off — it only appeared to be. Only God knows what kind of hidden tech these devices are using, activating in ways we can’t detect — not even through apps or tools.
The older version of QuickShare, which I still have and use, can still access and work with this underlying capability — it’s fully functional. This is likely the main reason Samsung updated the app’s mechanism: to make it more secure, and at least more logical from a user perspective — possibly to avoid user concerns about such hidden functionalities. And who knows what more lies beneath the surface!
