RE: detect smart phone central vs other nrf52 radios

ms360 — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 14:52:15 GMT

Thanks Swathy! very helpful

SwRa — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 12:27:22 GMT

Hello,

Many smartphones include their name in the advertising data, but this is not guaranteed—especially if the phone is not actively advertising or is using privacy features. there has been a discussion here: https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/f/nordic-q-a/119006/peripheral-filter-connections-by-central-device-name?ReplyFilter=Answers&ReplySortBy=Answers&ReplySortOrder=Descending

Filtering by vendor MAC address (OUI) is technically possible, but with significant limitations:

Modern smartphones (both iOS and Android) use random private addresses for BLE, which change periodically and do not reflect the vendor OUI. This is a privacy feature to prevent tracking.
As a result, you cannot reliably filter smartphones by their MAC address prefix, since the address will not correspond to Apple, Samsung, or other vendor OUIs in most cases See the discussion here: https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/f/nordic-q-a/108920/directed-advertising-to-android-phone-without-bonding?ReplyFilter=Answers&ReplySortBy=Answers&ReplySortOrder=Descending

Regards,

Swathy

ms360 — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 14:16:57 GMT

What about filtering on nordic vendor mac addresses. Is that possible?