- Samsung appears to be adding AirDrop to older Galaxy devices
- It follows the arrival of AirDrop on the Samsung Galaxy S26 series
- The feature allows Android users to share files to and from iOS products
Apple is well known for locking down key features of its iOS operating system and preventing them from spreading to competing devices, but cracks have recently started to appear. While this may mean easier file sharing for some Android users, there is one important issue to consider.
First, Google announced that Apple’s AirDrop sharing feature was working on Android. Then, earlier in March, news broke that Samsung was adding AirDrop compatibility to its Galaxy S26 series. Now, this is expanding to more Samsung devices, including the Galaxy Z Fold 7, Galaxy S22, Galaxy S23, Galaxy S24, and Galaxy S25.
In case you didn’t know, Apple’s AirDrop tool allows you to quickly and securely share files between two Apple devices. You can share from one iPhone to another, between an iPad and a Mac, or any combination of the two. There’s no file compression and you can lock it only to people in your contacts, preventing unwanted file sharing.
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For years, AirDrop has been an Apple exclusive. However, that all changed in late 2025, when Google revealed that it had brought AirDrop to Android – likely without Apple’s express permission, given how protective Apple is of its features and the company didn’t make a joint announcement with Google. While this may have led some observers to wonder how long AirDrop would stay on Android, it appears it’s actually expanding, at least for now.
Yet instead of being a similar AirDrop add-on for all the best Android phones, Samsung’s implementation functions as an extension of the existing Quick Share functionality. This means that the option to share items with iPhone users appears within Quick Share, not as a separate tool or app. This helps keep things simple while adding cross-platform compatibility.
What is the trap?
But before you get excited about the new feature on your Android phone, there’s a slight problem: the feature may not be fully operational yet.
For example, in a Samsung Community thread and under an article by Android specialist Tarun Vats on X, several users claimed that while they saw an option to use AirDrop on their Samsung phones, the feature didn’t actually work.
Other users said that the option to send files to iPhone users via AirDrop was missing from their devices even after installing the Quick Share update. This is reminiscent of Google’s AirDrop implementation, which was also buggy.
However, not everyone is struggling. On Reddit, many people said the feature appeared and was working for them after testing. So it seems like there’s a lot of luck involved in deciding whether or not you see the feature, and if you do, whether it actually works for you.
This suggests that Samsung is still working out issues with the AirDrop implementation. We’ll have to see if the issue is fixed and spreads to other Android devices before too long.
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