Connection issues with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Nexus 6

[Mario Amigot]

Since Google released Android Marshmallow 6.0 we are experiencing problems when connecting our nRF51822 based peripherals to a Nexus 6 phone. The Nexus 6 is able to see our peripherals' advertisements while scanning but when it initiates a connection to a peripheral by sending a CONNECT_REQ packet, in that specific nRF51822 the BLE_GAP_EVT_CONNECTED event is never thrown by the S110 softdevice stack so the connection is never established. The thing is that the same application run in a Nexus 5 with Android 6.0 works without any problem.

Has anybody experienced similar issues with Android 6.0 and Nexus 6? Any idea what may be going on or a solution to this?

[Mario Amigot]

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

[Tru Pheenix]

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.

[Freddy Sørensen]

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 :-(

[Nick]

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

[Freddy Sørensen]

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.