BLE support in phones

Jul 24, 2026 Last reply: 1 month ago 20 Replies

What a stream of bits "means" can be interpreted any way you want. We tend to agree on what the bits that have been mapped to these characters mean. But, they could easily be interpreted to mean ANYTHING else.

I can set my SSID to "Dr Alonzo's Cardiology" and convey (deceptive) information to passersby looking at available BT connections.

That's up to whomever defines that interface. A and B might, instead, be "turn on the light that is part of the opener mechanism" and "prevent any other WIRED controls from being recognized by the opener".

The FIRST issue to address is how ubiquitous the underlying technology is and how familiar it is to users: "How ubiquitous is (or isn't!) this? Is there a general (temporal) cutoff point where its support is "expected" before which it is a rarity?" The *hardware* and OS support has been around. But, it hides behind specific applications tied to specific peripherals -- a small subset of how it CAN be used.

Folks think of Bluetooth (Classic) and WiFi as "connectors". You "plug in" your earbuds and "plug your phone" into the internet. *YOU* control that action, for the most part. Unless you wander too far from your phone (or the AP), you EXPECT the connection to persist (barring hardware failures)

They don't think of it as something that they can have fleeting interactions with and still extract value. Waiting for a table at a restaurant and "seeing" YOUR expected wait time updated dynamically (you will NEVER connect to that instance again yet it has value NOW). Or, navigating a hospital or other semi-public facility for the first (only?) time. Or, standing in an endless line at Disney{Land,World} and receiving an updating notification "Wait time from this point is 45 minutes" -- which obviously changes the nearer you get to the destination.

It's only when people become accustomed to such interactions that they start *looking* for them. Otherwise, the technology has no value to them.

Appliances now have the ability to alert their users of significant events. But, do so using heavy protocols that often rely on (external) third parties (why can't my washing machine contact me directly without having to go through a manufacturer's server?)

If you can't *see* that BLE devices are present, then you don't consider looking to use them.

If I walk into a coffee shop, store, doctor's office, etc. there is no guarantee that they will DISPLAY an access point that I can use, there (as a courtesy). If my phone couldn't show me the SSIDs that it was encountering while there, I likely wouldn't notice the one named "Joe's Coffee Shop" so would not avail myself of that capability.

One wouldn't know the airport had beacons strewn about at known locations to assist with pedestrian navigation unless you could *see* those. Seeing them once might encourage you to investigate what sort of apps can exploit them and how to acquire those.

As I said upthread, you definitely wouldn't want to be bothered with installing an *app* to take advantage of these as their use frequency would likely approach zero. But, (as also indicated) referencing them in a web page that a facility can serve via a URl broadcast by a beacon (cf Eddystone) makes a lot of sense -- IF you are savvy enough to look for them.

From the informal survey I've done, most phones don't NATIVELY report the existence of proximate BLE devices. One has to install a scanner if you want to see what's available. And, tolerate the battery drain if one wanted to *follow* the signals available as one wanders about.

And, Average Joe's likely would just find this information confusing. They aren't sophisticated enough -- YET -- to see its value. If they've opted to buy a fitness tracker or watch, then their knowledge of BLE is hidden inside that product offering; they know nothing of what *else* it can do for them.

Nothing forces you to use a technology in a particular manner.

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