Hidden iOS feature and app called FireChat will change how we communicate on iPhone

AN INTERESTING app popped up on Apple’s App Store last week, a new messaging service called FireChat that uses a relatively unknown feature of iOS.

It’s called Multipeer Connectivity Framework, a fancy name for a feature which basically lets you communicate directly with another device using WiFi and bluetooth.

This is pretty awesome, and it’s a pretty big deal. It not only allows people to message and send files to each other without the need for a mobile or wireless network, but it allows it to happen over distances a lot further than what you can typically reach with a WiFi or Bluetooth connection.

This type of communicating is called wireless mesh networking, and FireChat is the first app (aside from iOS’s built in AirDrop) we have seen that uses it. Using the MCF, the app allows you to chat like you would through any other messaging app, but sends messages directly from phone to phone, perfect when you’re at a sporting event or concert and the networks are so congested that you can’t get anything through.

“As long as there is a FireChat-enabled device to act as a node in the chain, there’s really no geographic limit to how big the ad hoc network can be,” creator Micha Benoliel tells GigaOm, talking about the distance in which you can message someone from with FireChat.

Its capabilities aren’t just limited to messaging people at the Big Day Out or NRL grand final, it can also be used to communicate if a natural disaster occurs and mobile towers get taken out.

The potential for this type of networking is huge, especially in third-world countries where texting and data plans are too expensive. FireChat is just the beginning.

Source : news