Confirmed behavior for a MFi certified bluetooth device on iOS

Question

We are setting out to build an iOS app that will use the External Accessories Framework to talk with a device supplied by our customer who claims the device is MFi certifed.

Since we are only the app developers we don't have access to the resources available to the MFi program so we have to figure things out through trial and error.

It is our understanding and our tests seem to confirm to us through the building of another app with the EAF and another MFi bluetooth device that the app (and in turn the EAF) does not even come into play until "after" the pairing has occurred and the device is connected.

Our tests with trying to pair the device from this customer results in a message indicating:

     Pairing Unsuccessful
  "XXXXXXX" is not supported

Could this message even show up on a device if it were truly MFi certifed?

Is this message indicative of a device that is not a MFi certified device or could there be some other issue we still need to tackle?

If this message could show up when pairing a genuine MFi certified device, what could the problem be here?

What do we need from the manufacturer/customer to proceed from here?

Thanks for any insight on how to proceed.

Answer 1

I believe we have concluded that this device is not a genuine MFi certified device after all even though our customer's mfg originally indicated it was. Its likely it was a communication / language barrier problem or that they really didn't understand the requirements.