[ios][native pairing] Is there a trick to be abble to scan and pair directly form IOS bluetooth manager ?

[weartrbl]

Hi,

I am trying to improve the user experience on IOS with NRF52832: I would like to be abble to scan my device and pair using the IOS bluetooth native manager.

Is there a way to do so ?

Thanks

[Vidar Berg]

Hi,

I would like to be abble to scan my device and pair using the IOS bluetooth native manager.

I'm not that familiar with the terms used on the iOS side, do you mean pairing through Bluetooth settings in iOS? It does let user pair and use peripherals that expose profiles natively supported by the OS, HID (keyboard) for instance.  But I don't see how it would improve user experience if the device is not natively supported and the user needs to use a custom app anyway.  

  

  

[weartrbl]

Hi Vidar, yes I mean bluetooth settings in IOS.

1) First of all users are used to pair with IOS settings, so some beta testers tolds me they didn't understand how to pair...

2) My device can only pair with one phone, it's an imperative with my product. Imagine the user pair the device with phone A, then he pairs with phone B, then he wants to get back to phone A. Well The phone A thinks he's still paired with the device, but the device isn't... In android I just unpair it by soft, in IOS it's impossible: user have  to go in IOS settings to unpair manually the device. It's strange for the user because he didn't have to go in this menu to pair... so it's a really bad experience for him.

Well, I was in station F (Paris) on 19th of march Nordic Tech tour, an engineer told me that maybe there is a trick to do what I want.

What do you think ?

[Vidar Berg]

Hi, 

BT apps will typically prompt the user if she/he wants to pair with the device which is usually done once for each device (provided that there are characteristics with security level set above 0), but I see your point now that you mentioned the scenario where you have to unpair the device. iOS does not let your remove pairings from the app, that must be done through Bluetooth settings.  

Is the problem that the peripheral is not shown in Bluetooth settings? In that case, try to set the appearance (sd_ble_gap_appearance_set) in gap_init() and set the .include_appearance flag to 'true' in advertising init. 

[weartrbl]

unluckily the device is still is not visible :-/ The man told me that in advertisement you can cheat and tell you are a standard device recognized by apple

[Vidar Berg]

Forgot to add that you should turn Bluetooth off and on in Bluetooth settings before you test this to ensure iOS clears any cached advertisement packets. BLE_APPEARANCE_UNKNOWN worked for me.