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Would a Bluetooth LE Jedi know any trick how to get a reliable BLE scanning mode on cheap Android 4.4 devices ?

Everything works fine from Android 5 to 6, and most of the Android 4.4 phones... However, on some cheap phones with 4.4 we encounter random issues, some phones do not detect anything, or sometimes just a few beacons among others, depending on environment, daytime, weather, or whatever... It's obviously due to a poor software or hardware on this side, but is there any trick to make it more stable programmatically ? (for example enabling / disabling Bluetooth regularly)

EDIT

To describe a typical behavior:

First, note that it is the exact same behavior with all scanning Apps I could test (Estimote, Kontakt.io, AltBeacon, etc. etc.) - so this is much probably not a matter of App implementation.

It occurs only below Android 5 (4.4.2, 4.4.3, 4.4.4) and on cheap devices, never on phones like a Samsung S5 for example.

The behavior: let's assume we have 5 beacons very close (less than 2 meters, all working fine). - Once rebooted the phone finds 5 beacons for 1 or 2 minutes. - Then it finds nothing for 5 minutes. - After a refresh it finds 2 beacons. - Another refresh of the scan: only 1 found. Then none... etc.

I could not find any logic, for now it looks erratic. Enabling / disabling Wifi / Bluetooth, Bluetooth+Wifi, Wifi then Bluetooth, etc. make sometimes the scan find one more beacon, sometimes not... there is probably not much difference if I just wait without changing those params.

The only way to get back a reliable scan is to reboot the device... then it works only for 1 or 2 minutes again...

It occurs on some very different devices (a Wiko Sunset, a Samsung XCover, an Orange Roya).

On more recent devices (Nexus 6, Samsung S5, Samsung A4...), 100% of the beacons are detected, for hours, and never lost.

So, as the complete reboot is actually the best solution to get all beacons detected I was wondering if there is a way to "refresh" the device's Bluetooth module without rebooting it... Or if we just have to become a philosopher about this ;-)

JBA
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  • Adding a more specific description of the behavior of a single problematic device might make it easier to answer this question. As written, it is so broad that it is almost impossible to answer. – davidgyoung Feb 19 '16 at 23:04
  • Sure, I edited the question to add more info / typical behavior... – JBA Feb 20 '16 at 00:41
  • We encountered the same problem. It seems that if the Device has Android 4.3, 4.4.2 4.4.3 4.4.4 beacon detection performances is not good. With Android 5+ everything works. – Miwi Feb 23 '16 at 17:34
  • currently i'm encountering the same issue, did you find any solution ? – Ahmed Elshaer Feb 25 '19 at 14:58
  • We gave up maintaining pre Android-5 versions... Sadly, fighting against odd hardware is useless and those old devices are now quite a minority... – JBA Feb 25 '19 at 18:15

1 Answers1

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if you are develop your application using node.js then there are many api's avaliable which may work for you.But in case of android it is totally depend on your android version

M_Choudhary
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