Why use BLE without GATT?

[Per Thomas jahr]

I've come across a couple of products that shows up as both classic and BLE. But when connecting to these products via nRF Connect or inspecting the traffic, I can't seem to find any GATT services. One example is the Bose QuietComfort 35 headphones, another one is the iHealth HS4S scale.

Is there a specific reason for these products to enable BLE at all? Are they using BLE for something else than GATT?

[Sigurd]

Hi Per,

When I connect to a Bose QuietComfort 35 with nRF-Connect I see 4 services (Generic attribute, Generic Access, Device information and a Vendor specific one (shown as unknown in nRF-Connect)). The Vendor specific have 3 different characteristics.

[Per Thomas jahr]

Aha, this is not what I see. On my Nexus 5X running Android 7.1.1 there are no services shown in nRF-Connect. I've tried to reset the Bose QuietComfort 35 and also to remove the bonding, but still no services shown. I see in the release notes for nRF-Connect that "On Nexus 4 and 7 some problems may occur when connecting to devices, a specially bondable ones. Bluetooth sensor reset may be required to fix the problem." Maybe this is true for Nexus 5X as well. Any idea about how to reset the Bluetooth sensor?

[Sigurd]

I have now tested with a Nexus 5X myself, and I see the same issue here. I was not even able to connect with the 5X (GATT error was returned), so the services will not be listed/discovered. A sensor reset is just resetting the QC-35, but this did unfortunately not solve the problem. On a Samsung S6 everything worked perfectly, so this is an issue with the Nexus 5X.