19 Jun 2025
It’s so frustrating that you can almost exchange contact info with somebody by just touching your iphones together.
Now it only works if both parties opt-in within ten minutes before the touch. So, it’s really only useful for a hyperactive networking event.
Of course nobody wants to share their contact information with some rando that bumps you while you’re using your phone in public. And of course nobody wants to receive any pictures, text, or even a prompt on their phone from such a rando. Security!
So here’s how it should work: when any phones touch (by default) they should display some minimal non-disruptive animation. Already when enabled, Namedrop on iphone does this part just fine, with a quavery wave from the top of the display. It’s no more intrusive then somebody physically bumping your phone uninvited. Then, in order to actually exchange contact information, both people must make a distinctive motion holding their phone, for example bobbing it up and down twice.
It’s a good user-interface because one person who knows how can easily show the other in real life, with no intrusive on-screen prompt, and with no otherwise hard-to-navigate on-screen interaction. It should be relatively easy to make it secure, by only transferring the “handshake” info via bluetooth initially, and then transferring the actual contact info after both parties have “accepted” and have been authenticated by Apple, via the internet.
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