A new version of our Bluetooth File Transfer software for Android has been released yesterday: it's now version 3.50! Many minor-but-tough bugs have been fixed and some new features have been added, like the ability to stream data via Bluetooth and thumbnails creation for audio/video files (expand the post to learn more). There are also minor changes on the user-interface, like on program settings, and a correct visualization of data dimensions using Kibibyte unit, a standard by IEC, instead of the old and abused Kilobyte. Okey, let's now explain the recent major changes of the software in details, step by step...
Bluetooth streaming
You are searching for a particular track available on a remote Bluetooth device, without knowning its name, and you may have a lot of MP3 files to inspect for. With previous versions of Bluetooth File Transfer, you were forced to download an entire MP3 file just to listen the first 2-3 seconds of the song, with an incredible waste of time. Now with version 3.50, you can stream an MP3 file (for example) to your phone, so it starts playing immediately without downloading it on your SDcard first, and you can abort the listening after some seconds, if you wish: no more wasted time! You can stream any kind of file, if you have an application ready to handle it, like audio, video and document files. Here is some screenshots of this feature in action:
- 1. Connect to a remote device via Bluetooth using File Transfer Profile (FTP), locate the file you would like to play and then click over it;
- 2. When a remote file is streamable, an "Open method..." dialog will pop-up where you can choose between a temporary copy of the file on your SDcard or a direct stream of the data to your phone;
- 3. When more programs installed can handle your file, the famous "Complete action using" dialog will pop-up, otherwise when only 1 program can handle it, just skip to step 4;
- 4. The play starts immediately, after buffering some bytes of the media, without the need to download the whole file to your smartphone first;
- 5. If you come back to Bluetooth File Transfer during playback, a "Streaming..." dialog tells that there is a streaming currently running: you can abort it anytime!
The new "Select..." menu button
The old "Upload" (on local page) and "Download" (on remote page) menu buttons have been replaced with the new "Select..." button and this have caused a lot of confusion to end-users: we do our apologies! With this new button, you can select all the files currently displayed with a single click (or select none of them). But keep in mind that once selected, you have to press "Edit..." button and then "Copy (## items)" or "Cut / Move (## items)" and then go to the other page and press "Edit.." -> "Paste (## items)" to copy/move them. It requires a lot more clicks, we do understand, but in the time you'll learn the reason why this was implemented. Here is some screenshots of the new select button:
AUDIO and VIDEO files thumbnail creation
Thumbnails for audio and video files are now correctly created: animated video thumbnails will be available in near future. So Bluetooth File Transfer can now display thumbnails for: images, applications (APK), audio and video files. A screenshot with some examples:
Manual Bluetooth discoverable mode
In order to enable the DISCOVERABLE mode on your Bluetooth smartphone, you must now click over the "Discoverable" menu button on remote files page (only for Android 2.0 or above). The same DISCOVERABLE button can also be found on the home-screen widget: it's the second button in the metallic-grey panel. Here is the screenshots for this new button:
