I recently bought a new shining smartphone. :-) I’ve opted for the HTC Wildfire. I’ll probably revise it after I used it for a little while.
Anyway, I was looking for a way to transfer files between my computer and the smartphone via wireless.
Googling SwiFTP seemed to be the most common app for this task.
I looked for it on the Android Market and, surprisingly, it was not even there.
I’ve then found out that SwiFTP does not support smartphones with screen as little as the HTC Wildfire (240×320 QVGA). DUH!
Luckily for me OnAir is a “basic” but nice and fully working alternative to SwiFTP. It supports FTP, WebDav and AppleTalk protocols which makes it work with any operating system.
Once you have installed it from Android Market and run it, an interface like the picture below will appear.
The “big power button” in the middle of the screen does what you can imagine. It powers up the application.
Before doing that though you have to choose the protocol right for you.
AppleTalk is for Macintos. WebDav and FTP can be used for any operating system.
NB: Make sure to select the right protocol for your needs BEFORE pressing the power button.
I’m on Linux, Ubuntu in case it wasn’t clear yet.. :-) , and I’m going to use FTP (even though in the picture AppleTalk is selected).
So, after selecting FTP and power on the application, below the “big power button” a string of text and a four-digit number (which is going to be our password) will appear.
EG: “ftp://[email protected]:2221” and “7069” that is our password.
These are the details you can use to connect with any FTP client (eg: FileZilla). In the example above “onair” is the username, “192.168.1.3” the local IP address to connect to and “2221” the port.
NB: If the transfer seems to be too slow for a normal Wi-fi connection make sure your phone is not in standby.
You can do this setting the screen to be always on (temporarily of course). I didn’t look into this problem but it seems quite obvious that, when the phone is in standby, only very little power is available.
Enjoy your transfers! :-)