Trying to sync three devices through Bluetooth

[Gozoman]

I will explain what I have and what I'm trying to do and then hopefully someone will be able to tell me if it's possible or just a dream. I have an iPad Air, an iPhone 5 and a Sony Vaio laptop. I take a lot of photographs which I edit in Adobe Photoshop on the laptop and then put into their particular folders. When I come home I usually plug the iPhone into the laptop to charge it and it syncs and updates the photo folders on the iPhone. Given that the Sony and both my Apple devices are Bluetooth enabled I was hoping to be able to set them up so that when they came in close proximity to the laptop they would sync automatically using Bluetooth but I haven't been able to do it. Is it in fact possible to do this? I can set my iPad Air to sync with my laptop using the wireless network but that only seems to work if the iPad Air is plugged into a charger which sort of defeats the object of the exercise. I understand that there may be driver issues regarding trying to get the Sony and Apple products to connect through Bluetooth but I can't even get the iPad Air and the iPhone 5 to find each other even though they are sitting side by side. Just to sum up all three have Bluetooth switched on and are discoverable. Am I trying to do something that can't be done with regard to having all three sync automatically and why can't the two Apple products find each other even though they are both using the same operating system?

 

[J. A.]

Hi, welcome to iPF!

You can connect Bluetooth accessories such as headphones or keyboards to iPhone and iPad, afaik.

If you want to pair iPhone and iPad, you'll have to enable "Personal Hotspot" in Settings on one of them, and then go to Bluetooth on the other one. This way one device can use the other's internet connection.

It's not possible to transfer files that way, except if your iDevices are jailbroken, I suppose. Sorry!

 

[Gozoman]

Thanks for that. And there was me thinking that Apple had thought of everything, obviously not.

 

[J. A.]

You're welcome.

Apple certainly had a reason to do it this way.

There are other ways to get photos from a computer to iDevices. If you use online storage, they can be synced to your iPad and iPhone wirelessly. If you prefer to save your pictures to your Apple devices, it's possible to import them from there.

 

[Gozoman]

I assume you are referring to cloud. I'm afraid I don't use it and never would. We have enough trouble protecting our information without putting the stuff online somewhere!

 

[J. A.]

I didn't think of iCloud, but Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, ...

Anyway: if you don't trust online/cloud storage, there's no other way to get them to your iDevices than syncing via USB cable.

 

[Gozoman]

Cheers.

 

[twerppoet]

There are several apps that will allow you to transfer photos and files over your local wi-fi network, not cloud storage. iTunes itself has a wi-fi syncing option.

iOS: How to transfer or sync content to your computer

A good app for copying photos between your computer and other iOS devices is PhotoSync. PhotoSync will use your local wi-fi network by preference, but can use Bluetooth if no network is available. There is a companion app for the computer side, but it is not necessary; just very convenient. There are several similar apps, and many third party photo apps have this kind of support built in.

GoodReader is mostly about PDF reading and annotation, but it makes a fairly good general file storage app. It also has the ability to transfer files over your local network, though it take a little knowhow. The developer has fairly good online manual/help to get over the hump. Again, there are quite a few other apps with similar features, many that are for specific file types; like music/video, photos, PDF, etc.

I hope some of that is useful to you.


The following is pure speculation: I don not know Apple's motivation(s) for the things they do, or what the tech industry as a whole is about to do.

When Apple first came out with iOS, BlueTooth file transfer sucked. It was slow, has very limited range, and was inferior in speed, reliability, and and range to the worst wi-fi solutions. Apple being Apple, they chose not to include the standard in their devices.

BlueTooth 4.0 is a much more robust standard, but as far as Apple is concerned it missed the boat for file transfer. Instead Apple has created AirDrop, which uses a combination of BlueTooth 4.0 and peer-to-peer wi-fi networking. It's in it's infancy and, for now, works almost exclusively between newer iOS devices (mostly because of hardware requirements).

Right now there is a lot of competition for peer-to-peer file transfers. There is NFC (near field communications), BlueTooth 4.0, AirDrop, and a few other similar proprietary solutions. Which one, or ones, will win to be come standard(s) is a guess best made by industry analysts (who have very little reputation left to risk anyway).

 

[Gozoman]

Thanks. That's very interesting.

 

[Mobilearts]

PhotoShare will transfer photos via Bluetooth between iOS devices.

 

[suchlong]

learn a lot here, thanks, guys