iOS and Android bluetooth connection differences

Question

Just curious to understand why iOS devices connect to sphero directly but an app needs to do it in Android? Well that's what I guess is happening because sphero will keep flashing in identity colours in Android until an app completes a connection.

To add: to use the option that keeps the sphero alive on the charger while connected to the client, then IOS would not need an app running but Android would. Well the Android app could have a service running to keep a connection open with sphero. But ideally a consistent behaviour would be better.

Answer 1

Kasuku, you're correct in your post, but you also need to consider that the operating systems that you are comparing are completely different. For example, in Android it is possible to directly access the bluetooth adapter and "manually" connect to a bonded device. In iOS, this functionality is abstracted out from the developer.

To address BTLE: No, as of right now Sphero currently does not support BTLE hardware.

Answer 2

OK ... as usual this tag seems to be dead so I post my finding anyway:

Bluetooth hardware that wanted to connect to IOS, but were not following one of the standard profiles (e.g. headsets), need to conform to Apple's proprietary MFI (Made for IOS) protocol. So the connection is established by the IOS system and then it allows apps to access this connection.

But now newer IOS devices support Bluetooth LE so the MFI restriction no longer applies. I think Sphero2B is going to use this. Current Sphero hardware probably doesn't support BT LE. My next question is ... does sphero hardware support BT LE? ... but I'm not going to ask on this forum:)

Android on the other hand allows apps to negotiate the connections to paired devices.

Here's a link with more info: Some blog