That didn’t take long. It’s been just four days since I reported on Google’s surprise announcement that Google Pixel 10 devices would integrate their AirDrop-like Quick Share wireless file transfer feature with iPhones’ actual AirDrop.
Closing out that piece, I noted Google’s vague, lukewarm promise that “We’re looking forward to improving the experience and expanding it to more Android devices,” and shrugged when it came time to predict when those would actually arrive.
Well, now we know, thanks to announcements by phone brand Nothing and smartphone processor manufacturer Snapdragon. The next Android smartphones to become hooked into Apple’s AirDrop are already under development.
Can’t wait for people to use this once enabled on Snapdragon in the near future. https://t.co/IUvT23p5pq
— Snapdragon (@Snapdragon) November 21, 2025
when, and which devices?
Quick Share is Android’s answer to Apple’s wireless AirDrop method of sending files from one Apple device to another across short distances. If you’ve ever struggled through sending a file from your Android to a friend’s iPhone, iPad, or Mac, this new symbiotic relationship could be a godsend.
We still don’t have dates, exact or otherwise, on when to expect these additional phones beyond the Google Pixel 10 series to get the Quick Share-AirDrop cross-functionality, but we do have an idea of which Android phones we can expect to get it.
Snapdragon doesn’t name any specific phone models, but Snapdragon processors show up in a lot of smartphones, including Samsung’s Galaxy and OnePlus’ phones. That means an awful lot of flagship smartphones could soon broaden the Android platform’s compatibility with Apple’s AirDrop.
AirDrop is now compatible with Android! This is the kind of progress we need to see.
We’re already exploring how to bring this to Nothing phones as soon as we can. pic.twitter.com/dg9llVPA2I— Carl Pei (@getpeid) November 20, 2025
Android and Apple have both taken pains for many years to separate their ecosystems, but much more so on Apple’s part. As a way of leveraging their market share, Apple wants to make it so that you buy an iPhone because it works so much better with your friends’ iPhones, then convert your other devices—tablets and computers—to Apple products so that they’ll all work seamlessly together, and then retain you as a customer because you’re hooked into the Apple ecosystem.
We’ll continue to watch for announcements on when to expect these other Android phones to start playing nicely with iPhones, but Snapdragon and Nothing both feel confident enough to announce it publicly, which I’d wager means they’re not too far away from bringing it to market.
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