Not able to connect nRF5340 LE Audio to Android

[Paveletu]

Hi support team! I hope you're well.

I'm trying to connect nRF5340 Audio DK (gateway) to my Pixel 6a. The problem is there's no `NRF5340_AUDIO` detected via Bluetooth when I flash the sample in CIS mode and in BIS mode it's detected but cannot be connect (please find a screenshot from nRF Connect application attached).

Is there any way to make nRF5340 connectable to a phone?

Also, does my phone require to have a "LE Audio" supported chipset (like the once listed here: www.qualcomm.com/.../bluetooth-le-audio) on it to even be connected? Will Bluetooth 5.2 and OS support (Android 13 has support for LE Audio profile) not be enough?

As a side note my question is very similar to this one: https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/f/nordic-q-a/91856/nrf5340-audio-dk-connection-to-phone

Many thanks,
Warm Regards,
Pavel

[Paveletu]

Hi Nordic team,

I've just received Pixel 7 with LE Audio support and I still cannot connect to any of NRF5340 Audio configurations (headset/gateway, CIS/BIS). Is it possible? Here's the screenshot from NRF Connect application:



Thank you,
Warm regards,
Pavel

[Chris Lovett]

I was able to pair an nrf5340 audio devkit running as a headset to a Google Pixel 8 phone running Android 14, by enabling the experimental "LE Audio" feature on the paired device settings.  Here you can see me stream audio from a youtube video to the earbuds connected to the nrf5340 audio devkit, which means Android 14 now supports the LC3 codec.



Here's the bluetooth pairing dialog, I had to select this device, select settings, then enable "LE Audio".  I also had to use developer options to "Enable LE audio toggle in Device Details".  Now I just have to figure out how to make it work the other way around with the nrf5340 acting as a microphone.  More details here: https://lovettsoftware.com/#posts/nrf5340_pixel/.

[Hejdern]

Chris, were you able to get audio input from the NRF5340 to your Android Phone? I'm looking into a similar test setup but I am browsing around before I get my feet wet :) Thanks in advance!

[Chris Lovett]

I have not yet, I'm able to pair the device with bidirectional mode enabled, and it shows up on the Android phone as a headset and the Android AudioManager sees it in the list of microphones, but when I try and record something the Android phone drops the link for some unknown reason.  I'm now trying new firmware version 2.6.0 since I've been told this may fix some bugs involving the Android phone.  Ping me again in a few weeks to see if I have any updates.

[Hejdern]

Interesting, thanks for the info! Ultimately I'm looking for a solution where I can receive a BIS and do some processing on the received data. I'm having access to a Samsung S23, hoping the pending upgrade to OneUI 6.1 and later on to Android 15 can give some more possibilities! I'll ping you in a bit!