iOS nRFConnect issue with scanning

RE: iOS nRFConnect issue with scanning

Jiajun — Wed, 06 Jun 2018 11:41:15 GMT

Hi Richard,

Thanks for sharing us the information.

I will mark it as enhancement we need to do.

RE: iOS nRFConnect issue with scanning

Richard D. — Tue, 05 Jun 2018 19:04:02 GMT

My latest configurations:

iPhone 6 - nRF Connect v1.8.5, iOS v11.4
iPad 4, iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 4 - all running v1.8.5 and latest version of iOS (11.3.3, 11.4, 11.4 respectively).

All these iOS devices have non-responsive UI in the presence of 30+ BLE devices. I don't think the issue is with my iPhone or iPads because other BLE developer apps (e.g. LightBlue, BLE Scanner) running on the my same devices do not have problems with UI responsiveness.

All these iOS devices work just fine when there are only a few BLE devices in the area, so I have a workaround and am not sure how much more research is warranted.

RE: iOS nRFConnect issue with scanning

Jiajun — Tue, 05 Jun 2018 11:16:49 GMT

Hi Richard,

Thank you for updating with us.

The performance on iOS device can be constrained by battery level, memory ram, apps running in background etc, and older iOS device can have lagging performance after upgrading to newer version of iOS.

We have iPhone 6 and running in our test environment (around 20-30 devices), found no significant dropping of performance.

As reference, we also have newer model iPhone, X, 8, 7 have no issue on scanning performance.

nRF Connect have great performance update after 1.8.3. Please make sure the app is updated.

RE: iOS nRFConnect issue with scanning

Einar Thorsrud — Tue, 05 Jun 2018 07:16:24 GMT

Which iPhone and iPad models have you tested with? Do you see the same behavior if you test in an area with fewer BLE devices in range?

RE: iOS nRFConnect issue with scanning

Richard D. — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 16:27:44 GMT

As I described in my original post, the problem behavior exists with both v1.8.5 and v1.8.2, on both iPhone (6) and iPad, running iOS 11.3 and 11.4

I tried the app away from the office this weekend, with only one other BLE device in range and the app is responsive and behaves as expected. The 'stop scanning' button works and the scanning timeout of 30 seconds is just that, 30 seconds.

Then this morning, I tried the app again in the office where there are 30-50 BLE devices in range and the app is unresponsive and the 30 second timeout takes over 2 minutes to timeout.

So it seems the bad behavior is somehow related to the number of devices within range.

RE: iOS nRFConnect issue with scanning

Jiajun — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 13:43:54 GMT

Hi Richard

Thanks for using nordic apps.

The default of scanning behavior is 30 sec, unless this have been changed in the setting page.

To make it automatically scan is used to make it immediate response to nearby device. That is genuine of BLE scanning tool.

From your description, it seems a performance issue.

Can you tell us which device you are using?

And I also have a few suggestions:

1. Follow the update of nRF Connect in app store.

2. Installing on newest iOS device.

3. Re open the app in a place with less BLE devices, to see if it works.

RE: iOS nRFConnect issue with scanning

Einar Thorsrud — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 12:14:33 GMT

Hi Richard,

I have not been able to reproduce this issue on my side. Everything you described seems to work as expected on my iPhone 7 with iOS 11.4 and nRF Connect 1.8.5. Which iPhone/iPad models have you used to test (not that it should matter)? Do you do anything else that could potentially trigger this issue?