Bluetooth 4.0 / Smart / Low energy on Samsung Galaxy S3

Question

I'm trying to develop a bluetooth 4.0 app for S3. The problem is, the phone behaves like it doesn't even have bluetooth 4.0. It doesn't discover 4.0 devices, and isn't discoverable with 4.0 devices. I tried both in the settings of the phone and in an app, using the Broadcom-ble API. The Broadcom API doesn't have any extra functionality for finding/discovering 4.0 devices, rather it uses the regular BluetoothAdapter functionality and claims that it will be augmented in 4.0 phones to also discover 4.0 devices.

Has anybody tried using bluetooth 4.0 on the S3? Has anyone succeeded in using the Broadcom API?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Update your phone to Jelly Bean, then download nRf Utility from the Play Store, it can scan BLE devices around you!

Answer 2

It has been reported by Andrew Dodd, a senior XDA developer, that the Galaxy S3 doesn't actually support Bluetooth Low Energy

The Galaxy S3 has been marketed as Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy (aka Bluetooth Smart) since its release - but it is not actually BTLE capable -http://developer.samsung.com/forum/board/thread/view.do?boardName=GeneralB&messageId=157757 - Samsung is STILL advertising the device as BTLE capable when it is NOT, despite the fact that they have been aware of this false advertising for months.

Answer 3

Refer this link http://e2e.ti.com/support/low_power_rf/f/538/p/240097/879328.aspx

http://e2e.ti.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-discussions-components-files/538/8880.S3-BLE.zip,

attachment package can run on Samsung S3, now it limit with discover BLE devices and pairing. Some recent days, i try to find out how to send/receive data. But still not any luck.

I hope it can help.

Answer 4

Samsung have a page at:

http://developer.samsung.com/ble

where you can download a Bluetooth LE SDK and sample code (registration is required, but otherwise it's automatic).

For what it's worth, there's an HTC page at:

http://www.htcdev.com/devcenter/opensense-sdk/partner-apis/bluetooth-low-energy/

where you can request access to their 'Partner APIs'. This needs license agreements to be signed (which for me means lots of lawyering) so I've not actually got code from them yet..

Ian

Answer 5

A beta for Samsung BLE SDK has been released here. I am going to study this SDK and hopefully it solves some of my problems.

Answer 6

This is now a confirmed bug, that will be fixed "in future releases".

See this forum thread at Samsung.