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To expand on this, for Bitchat to achieve anything close to its advertised range, it truly relies on a high density of users acting as relays in an open environment. Without that, you're essentially just doing a direct phone-to-phone Bluetooth connection, which will be subject to all the typical range limitations because of: Walls, Furniture, 2.4 GHz Congestion, Phone Antenna Quality and Placement, Phone Transmit Power, Phone Receiver Sensitivity.

The whole point of Bluetooth Mesh is that messages "hop" from one device to another. To achieve a 300-400 meter range, you would need a dense network of active Bitchat users, with each user reliably within 30-50 feet (or less, depending on the environment) of another, like at a meet up or conference. Its kinda like skipping a rock with a note on it across phones so Alice can msg Bob from 350 meters away.

Could the range be increased if phones used wifi for this?

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Discussion

Instead of relying on a traditional Wi-Fi router or access point, Bitchat COULD leverage Wi-Fi Peer-to-Peer. This allows Wi-Fi-enabled devices to connect directly to each other. One device essentially acts as a "soft access point" while others connect to it. Although this would make engineering a real pain in the ass, Device Compatibility and OS Support headaches, Your phones power consumption would go up, Apple's iOS has more restrictions on developer access to low-level Wi-Fi networking features compared to Android, Managing which device acts as a "group owner" and ensuring smooth transitions in a dynamic mesh could be challenging. 🤷

Thank you, I learned something! 🙏🏻