Google Nearby Connections API v2.0 comes with full offline functionality

Google promised a revamped Nearby API at its I/O developer conference in May and walking the talk, it has now announced the availability of version 2.0 of the Nearby Connections API that provides a “fully offline, high bandwidth peer to peer device communication.”

Nearby uses a combination of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE, and regular Bluetooth to discover and connect to devices that are nearby. Although the Wi-Fi chip is being used, a connection to Wi-Fi or any form of cellular data is not necessary, facilitating users to transfer or stream data to or from their devices, when no network is available.

This means your hotel room could auto-adjust the temperature the moment you walk in or tune in your favorite music or you and your partner's phones could merge contacts whenever in proximity etc. With the ability for the API to be harnessed to form an offline mesh network, it could also be used as a means of bypassing censorship for the free distribution of information. It could even allow for alerts in areas filled with people but deprived of data, as in the case of natural disasters.

"This abstraction enables seamlessly upgrading the bandwidth of a connection by switching between the radios as and when it makes sense, as well as getting invisible over-the-air updates to use new radio technology as it becomes available — with no change whatsoever in the application code," Google writes in its blog post.

Nearby Connections API has been in the making for quite some time. The API was first announced in 2015 as a way for mobile devices to be used as second screen controllers for games that are running on your TV. Google also spoke about few things that its partners are working on. The Weather Channel, for instance, is building out an on-demand mesh network for weather warnings in data-deprived areas, GameInsight is using it to find and play with nearby players, and Android TV will even use it for remote control and setup in the future.

The full technical details, for interested developers, are available over here at the developer documentation site, and v2.0 only works on Android devices running Play Services 11.0 and up.