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.

[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.