Android – Bluetooth Low Energy Discovery on Android

androidbluetooth-lowenergy

It seem Bluetooth Low Energy (aka Bluetooth Smart) has no official support on Android, even version 4.2. Anyone know if the standard Android API can discovery BLE devices? (I don't need pairing just discovery would be good)

Best Answer

It is correct that Android took a switch from Bluez -> Broadcom Bluetooth. This switch was causing lots of problems for Android users. Missing BT classic profiles and Wifi v.s. BT coexistence (one probably reset the other since they are in the same chipset in most phones). iPhone and MAC computers suffer a lot from the same problem (BT v.s. Wifi).

The Broadcom Open Source Low Energy API was not included in 4.2.

HTC One X+ got slightly modified (?) Broadcom BLE API on top of Bluez in 4.1.x and it works reasonably good though I have to retry connection sometimes. The package name is htc not broadcom but sometimes Eclipse error messages tells that it is missing some broadcom references. Also Samsung got a "secret" API for BT BLE with their own package name which can discover devices but seems to be not really robust (which may be why it is "secret")

Google have officially said that "BLE is the next big thing we will release". So maybe in Android 5.0? but hopefully before so Galaxy S2 (which have such a big marketshare and uses the same chipset as iPhone 4s) can get BLE support. (Just speculations and hopes from my side). If Android 5.0 get's BLE API's then Samsung Galaxy S3 should get it as Samsung has listed this as getting Android 5.0.

Only time or Google will tell... It's way overtime getting this old Nokia Research Center technology out in other than Meego and iOS devices.