Bluetooth low energy ble available in android 4 3 and later creates short connections between devices to transfer bursts of data.
Bluetooth low energy devices android.
This lets ble provide lower bandwidth and reduced power consumption compared to classic bluetooth.
It is highly recommended reading.
The first problem i faced was that i needed to make sure that the device s bluetooth is not only on but also visible.
Android 4 3 api level 18 introduces built in platform support for bluetooth low energy ble in the central role and provides apis that apps can use to discover devices query for services and transmit information.
This article covers the missing and confusing parts in the android developers overview article on bluetooth low energy.
This is not a tutorial.
Ble remains in sleep mode when not connected.
Lightblue can connect you to all of your devices that use bluetooth low energy also known as bluetooth smart or bluetooth light.
Bluetooth low energy provides only 0 3 mbps of application throughput.
Common use cases include the following.
The data is sent in small 20 bytes packages but the range can be even more than 100 meters 330 feet and the minimum latency between unconnected state to data transfer can be counted in a handful of milliseconds while in bt classic it s about 100 ms.
Technical solution in three steps.