What signal of a phone can another phone detect? (Exclude BLE)

Question

What signal (that is turned on permanently or most of the time) of our phones can another phone detect?

For example, if we turn on BLE then another phone is able to detect it using their BLE. However, people do not tend to leave their phone's BLE on all the time.

So, what else can I use?

are you trying to detect nearby open phones? Then radiation energy in a range of operating frequencies above a given threshold should very well do it — Nikos M., Apr 13 '20 at 15:57
@NikosM. i am trying to detect other phones and get a unique id from them using other phones, NOT another device. — , Apr 13 '20 at 15:59

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 14 '20 at 06:24

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Besides Bluetooth, your only other options are WiFi and NFC. However, similar to Bluetooth, WiFi and NFC can be turned of for long periods of time to save power (e.g. airplane mode). Moreover, not all phones support NFC or expose API to use it.

I would say your best bet is WiFi due to its more frequent use (relative to Bluetooth and NFC). It still has restrictions though and I would say Bluetooth is more suitable for your purpose. Below you can find a list of links that might be useful for your research:-

I hope this helps.

answered Apr 14 '20 at 06:24

Youssif Saeed

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does a device has a unique Wifi id? Something that I could identify a device of. – Apr 14 '20 at 07:19
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You can potentially use the remote device's MAC address which should be unique per device. – Youssif Saeed Apr 15 '20 at 06:15
Any idea if I can do that in React-Native? For both OS. – Apr 15 '20 at 07:44
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No unfortunately I haven't used React-Native before so I'm not sure. – Youssif Saeed Apr 16 '20 at 06:13

What signal of a phone can another phone detect? (Exclude BLE)

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