iOS 7.1.2 : what did really change for iBeacon?

Question

I didn't find any clear answer through my searching and I am wondering what is meant by :

Improves iBeacon connectivity and stability

I am interested into knowing what changed here. I guess it won't be much, but I'd like to know how good the technology may have improved.

• How is the connectivity better? Is it monitoring/ranging related? Both?
• Or does it have something to do with the device bluetooth connectivity? In what way?
• In what way is it more stable? What is meant by more stable : a more precise accuracy for proximity detection? As it relies on Bluetooth Low Energy, could it really be better than is it now?

Those are a few question that are on my mind. I am going to try to have some testing on my side, but if someone did it already, I would appreciate to know the results!

Answer 1

I can answer the question related with the beacon stability.

When you range the beacons around, you parse their advertisement data, then identify them and get their signal strength. If the signal strength (RSSI value) is same or almost the same for every range (search), then we can say that this beacon is stable. If not, it is not stable.

According to my experiments, it is not much stable but this can change according to different beacon types and other inputs like how often the beacon advertise (it is assumed that 10 times per second gives the best performance).