Connection issues with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Nexus 6

RE: Connection issues with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Nexus 6

Mario Amigot — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 08:51:15 GMT

I've forgotten to mentioned that I confirmed with the help of a BLE sniffer that a central device (in my case was a Samsung Galaxy S6) running Android 6.0 does not send the CONNECT_REQ packet when trying to establish a connection with a peripheral device (nRF51822) with random address. However, changing the address to a public one the connection is established correctly.

RE: Connection issues with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Nexus 6

Mario Amigot — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 08:24:29 GMT

Sorry I didn't update earlier this issue with my findings. After some research visiting lots of webs and forums for BLE developers, I found that the cause of this misbehavior was a bug in Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) that appears when working as central device trying to connect with BLE peripheral devices with random addresses (which is the default in Nordic's nRF51822). Even Google already released a bug fixing Android patch (within v6.0.1 branch), remember that Android device manufacturers are the ones to actually launch the software updates for their devices (which is a process known for taking a very long time), plus it's really hard to know which specific patches are included within those updates (even they were labeled as Android v6.0.1) and you need that ALL your users update their devices as soon as the bug fix is released in order to be able to use it. So my solution was to change the random addresses of the nRF51822 devices to public ones.

P.S.: You can check here some links that matche with my explanation: www.thetileapp.com/.../android-6-0-0-marshmallow-connectivity devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../ forum.csr.com/.../68409-android-bluetooth-fails-due-to-storing-too-many-random-bluetooth-addresses-mesh

RE: Connection issues with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Nexus 6

nicko_f — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 04:44:40 GMT

I had the same problem with Android Versions 6 and above. How I fixed the problem was to define:

#define SEC_PARAM_LESC                   0                 /**< LE Secure Connections not enabled.*/

To make sure LE Secure Connections is not enabled. Hope it helps fixes the problem.

RE: Connection issues with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Nexus 6

Nick — Mon, 16 May 2016 19:22:53 GMT

Yes, what a mess. Our product is totally consumer oriented so we're just going to have to do exchanges for the affected users. Thanks for posting the your discovery though. Before finding it I was totally lost and now I've confirmed that adding a name "fixes" the problem for us also. It was just in time to get the update on a big order from the factory too, so it saved us a lot of trouble.

RE: Connection issues with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Nexus 6

Freddy Sørensen — Mon, 16 May 2016 17:01:18 GMT

Hi Nick, I've no idea how to reach the Android team. After I can see that the problem is available on Marshmallow from most manufactures, it's unthinkable to expect a solution on all these phones in the near future. Android is an amateurish nightmare, that just continues to get worse and worse. We do see so many different 'private' variants of Marshmallow, all with bugs that makes them incompatible with both standard Android and BLE. The only solution left for us, is make an upgrade of all devices, including our stock :-( We have not added DFU to our firmware yet, so the customers will have to use nRF Toolbox.

RE: Connection issues with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Nexus 6

Nick — Mon, 16 May 2016 15:37:25 GMT

Has anyone come up with a workaround for this? Is the Android team aware of it/working on it?

RE: Connection issues with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Nexus 6

Freddy Sørensen — Tue, 19 Apr 2016 19:40:22 GMT

After my Galaxy S6 was updated to Marsmallow, I start to see the same problem. I do have a device, to which I can't connect with my smartphone. It looks like it's the same problem, as I've seen in the past with HTC phones running Android 5. If you use the sample code like the ble_app_hrs, everything works fine. This is because the advertising data includes a 'name tag'. I didn't have space for a 'name tag' in my adv_data, so I solved the problem by adding the 'name tag' to the response_req. So right now I have thousands of BLE-devices on the market, which won't connect anymore, when the owners smartphones are updated to Marshmallow :-(

RE: Connection issues with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Nexus 6

Tru Pheenix — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 09:58:54 GMT

I can confirm this. I am using the Red Bear Lab BLE Nano board with the S110 softdevice.

Our peripheral is configured to advertise as an iBeacon and is also connectable as a UART device.

On Android Lollipop and below, the Nexus 5 works fine. On Marshmallow, the Nexus 5 connects the first time. But if we turn off Bluetooth and turn it back on again the Nexus 5 refuses to connect.

On the peripheral, there is no connection request received.

Will anyone tell me what this issue is about? I'm using MBED to develop my firmware.

RE: Connection issues with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Nexus 6

Mario Amigot — Tue, 03 Nov 2015 07:38:30 GMT

Thanks Martin, I have already reported this issue through 'my support cases' of 'my Nordic page'. Hope we find the cause and solution as soon as possible. Cheers

RE: Connection issues with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Nexus 6

MartinBL — Fri, 30 Oct 2015 08:40:44 GMT

So it seems like there is some obscure changes made to Marshmallow that makes it incompatible with your peripheral application, right?

What Softdevice are you running? Could you upload your code? You can do it here if you want confidentiality.

Is it reproducible using some example in the SDK you are using?

RE: Connection issues with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Nexus 6

Mario Amigot — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 10:32:59 GMT

I don't think so...The new 'Location' permission requested by Android 6.0 only affects the fact that a BLE scan can be performed by the app or not. However, we have proved the Nexus 6 with Android 6.0 running either our app or Nordic's nRF Master Control Panel app is still able to find our BLE peripheral device during scan, but it's not able to establish a connection. As I said in my first post, the Nexus 6 seems to send the CONNECT_REQ packet but the BLE peripheral doesn't receive it (or the BLE_GAP_EVT_CONNECTED event is not thrown by the S110 softdevice at least).

RE: Connection issues with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Nexus 6

MartinBL — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 08:54:53 GMT

There was some changes in security configurations in Marshmallow. Do you think this, this, or this might be relevant?

RE: Connection issues with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Nexus 6

Mario Amigot — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 11:19:19 GMT

Hello Martin, thanks for your support. Our custom application was developed from an older SDK with an older S110. The thing is that it should work regardless the software setup we are using, right? Our application works perfectly with any iOS device and Android device (including Nexus 6 with Android 5.x). However, after upgrading the Nexus 6 to Android 6.0, it does not connect anymore, while the Nexus 5 (for example) with Android 6.0 it does. I've just tried to connect the Nexus 6 with Android 6.0 to our peripheral device by using the nRF Master Control Panel app but it failed as well. Are there specific improvements related to connection establishment in the newer SDK/S110 software versions which would explain this missbehavior?

RE: Connection issues with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Nexus 6

MartinBL — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 10:09:17 GMT

Hi. It seems to work fine here when we try to use the ble_app_hrs example from SDK 9, with Softdevice S110 V8, and the nRF Master Control Panel app to connect. Are you using a custom application and app? Could you try the setup above to see if that works?