iOS bluetooth app issues, hardware or software?

[wookiie]

I am a new member, hopefully this isn't posted in the wrong area, and hasn't been posted about elsewhere, apologies if it has in advance.

I'm at the planning stage of an app that utilises bluetooth and want to check something out before I proceed. Most of the bluetooth apps on the app store seem to get low customer feedback due to connectivity problems. I am aware of problems some users have had with the iphones bluetooth (particularly the i4 it seems), so my question is - with so many apps with low feedback, is this likely to be a problem with the softare on the appstore, or inherent with the iphone?

 

[adrian.oconnor]

What bluetooth apps? Sorry if I'm being dumb, but I thought that bluetooth was out of bounds in the official SDK? All of the bluetooth audio stuff is handled by the phone -- no app involvement at all.

 

[robbieduncan]

What bluetooth apps? Sorry if I'm being dumb, but I thought that bluetooth was out of bounds in the official SDK? All of the bluetooth audio stuff is handled by the phone -- no app involvement at all.

You can use GameKit to have apps talk to each other over bluetooth. You cannot get generic bluetooth though.

 

[adrian.oconnor]

You can use GameKit to have apps talk to each other over bluetooth. You cannot get generic bluetooth though.

That's true, and I've even used game kit in one of my apps, but from a developers perspective you don't do anything Bluetooth related - you just ask for a gksession and the iPhone does the rest.

The gk networking stuff is great - I used it to build an iPhone remote for a bespoke iPad app. The connection sometimes takes a while to establish, but it works and it's beautifully simple.

 

[xStep]

Look into Bonjour also. From what I've read it handles both wifi and Bluetooth.

By the way, networking is HARD. I'm having my own issues with it with what I think should be simple data exchanges.