Comment by ricardobeat

That's true, I should have mentioned it did not use device-to-device communication. It was the best possible experience for the time though, BT was not viable and wifi direct did not exist. 3G averaged at maybe 10Mbps, and photos were 2 megapixels (if you had a camera at all), more than enough speed. We were mostly sharing URLs and contacts.

By faster I mean the initial connection, it was instant despite the server-based pairing, which made it feel even more magical. With AirDrop you sometimes experience quite a bit of signal hunting.

A comparable experience would be when you touch phones to share a contact with NFC, it was in that ballpark of responsiveness.