I am working on an application and one feature that would make it really useful is the ability to share some information, but the other device may not be expecting the data to be sent.
For example, if I am reading a really good book, and I realize that a friend may like it, I could use an application to send the data to him, so he could order the book from Amazon.
But, since he isn’t expecting the data, I would hate for the application to be polling a server every so often, as that will be needlessly draining the battery.
Ideally it would be great if there was a way to make a phone call to the target device, send a data packet and end the call.
If it could be done and prevent the phone from ringing, then it would be very useful to me.
I am curious if there is some way to send data between devices without polling.
You can send them a message via facebook or email (e.g. here), or broadcast it with twitter.
These approaches – using an existing infrastructure for messaging – provide mechanisms for discovering your user’s contacts / ‘friends’ and so on too.
Your can send and read SMS on phones if you have the correct permissions.
You could talk to Mashmobile who have a bigger platform that can do peer-to-peer between phones. You could imagine a hybrid that did both Mashmobile for Windows/Android/Symbian and Apple’s push for iPhone users of your app.
On future phones, you could use C2DM (which is a application-specific messaging system overlay on gmail – the Android phone user has to have a Google account etc)