Samsung's latest flagship mobile phone Galaxy S26 series will gain compatibility support for Apple's AirDrop starting this week. Users can send photos and files directly to iPhone and Mac after updating the mobile phone, further breaking the sharing barriers between Android and iOS.
According to Samsung, this new feature will be released through a software update. After the update is completed, the "Share with Apple devices" option will be added to the "Quick Share" settings of the Galaxy S26 model, which needs to be manually turned on in the settings menu. After enabling it, users only need to open the Quick Share interface to find nearby Apple devices that are open to receiving, and then select the target to send photos or files. On the receiving end, the iPhone needs to set the AirDrop reception option to "Everyone" in order to recognize and receive content from the Galaxy phone.
In terms of implementation, this is similar to the mechanism by which the Google Pixel 10 series gained AirDrop compatibility through updates last year: it also relies on the sharing function on the Android side and achieves point-to-point direct transmission with Apple devices through protocol compatibility. Samsung said that AirDrop compatibility will be expanded to more Galaxy models in the future, starting with the S26 series.
Samsung said that the introduction of AirDrop interoperability is part of its strategy to promote cross-system collaboration on mobile phones. It hopes to reduce friction between different ecosystems and make it smoother for users to transfer content between multi-platform and multi-brand devices. Considering that Apple and Samsung have long been at the top of the global best-selling mobile phone list, this mutual transfer experience between AirDrop and Quick Share is expected to be rapidly popularized in daily use scenarios in the future. If Samsung subsequently devolves this feature to more mid- to low-priced models, such as the Galaxy A17 priced at about US$200, cross-platform wireless sharing may become one of the "standard capabilities" of smartphones and will no longer be limited to a single brand or a single ecosystem.