Here’s Our Early Look at Google’s NameDrop-Style Contact Exchange for Android

Google seems to be working on a contact-sharing feature for Android, and it looks a lot like Apple’s NameDrop. Apple announced this feature over two years ago at WWDC 2023, the company’s annual developer conference, and the public release took place in the fall of 2023 with iOS 17. Essentially, it’s a pretty cool way to share your contact information, and you might soon see the feature come to your Galaxy phone.

Google is inching closer with its own version of NameDrop, and this is our first look!

Android Authority spotted a feature called Gesture Exchange sometime ago, which now reads Contact Exchange. Since it lives inside Google Play Services, it is more likely to arrive through a future Android Feature Drop rather than a full Android 17 update. They even managed to force-launch one of the hidden activities inside Play Services and got an early look at the UI. Right now, it is very basic, but it shows the key idea.

You will be able to choose what you want to share, including your profile photo, phone number and email. There is also a “Receive only” option for situations where you only want to collect someone else’s details without sending your own. Once the phones are brought close enough, Android will show the incoming card with options to save it as a new contact. It even shows quick buttons for messaging or video calling, though that feels more like a placeholder than something people will use in real life.

The code hints at NFC, since it references NDEF, which stands for NFC Data Exchange Format. That said, the feature could use NFC only for the initial handshake and then switch to Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. Since contact cards often include a profile photo, Google may need a faster method than plain NFC for the actual transfer, so the technical side is still unclear.

The outlet adds that the UI is still very rough, so it does not look close to launch. But the fact that it sits inside Play Services suggests Google wants this to reach all Android users at once, similar to how it rolled out features like Calling Cards earlier this year.