Handshake And Fliq Offer Wifi Contact Sharing

Proving yet again that it pays to shop around, at least two recently-released apps are offering broadly the same functionality. One is free; the other is free (with adverts) or costs three bucks. But which is the better option?

First, we have Handshake. The idea is simple: two people meet, they both have Handshake installed. They can use it to fling their contact details across to one another. Pretty simple, pretty sweet. They can send pictures from one iPhone to the other too.

But, Handshake as-is comes with adverts; quite a lot of adverts. There’s a big one at the top of the screen that looks like a button, and another at the bottom of the screen that looks a banner ad from the early days of the web. Oh, and they are animated. Frankly, it’s very off-putting.

Handshake Premium offers exactly the same features, but kills the ads. All you have to ask yourself is: do I care enough about intrusive advertising to want to spend three bucks to get rid of it? Your call.

But wait, here’s an alternative – Fliq lets you “fliq” (uh-huh) contact cards or photos from one iPhone to another, via the wifi network they are both connected to. Exactly the same as Handshake, in fact. But without the ads.

(Apologies for the mostly-empty screenshot. There’s no-one else on my home network for my copy of Fliq to find… because there’s no-one else here during the day. Such is the lonely life of a home-based freelancer. No, really, I’m fine, I’ve just got something in my eye.)

The very fact that these apps are popping up is nice, but it would be nicer still if Apple opened up the Bluetooth that’s built into every iPhone and allowed it to do some of the things it does very well in almost every other handset on the planet – like transferring contact cards and photos and stuff. Then at least our phones could swap data without a wifi connection. That wouldn’t get rid of the ads, though.