iPhone Opens Up Bluetooth For Data 129
WildNahviss writes "Apple has loosened its tight grip on the iPhone and allowed a third party to develop a health device that exchanges data with the iPhone and their hardware. Is this the start of a trend for Apple that will relax constraints on non-audio Bluetooth use, or is this an exception? Does anyone know of any other devices for the iPhone that allows non-audio Bluetooth transmission of data?"
Reader climenole points out an article about another health-sensor system, dubbed a "body area network," that is built to work with Android devices, but not via Bluetooth.
Nothing new here. (Score:1, Informative)
Any Made-For-Ipod certified company can design gadgets that talk via bluetooth back to the iPhone. So nothing new here.
Re:not so tight grip (Score:5, Informative)
They opened it up. But every bluetooth device you want to talk to has to be built from scratch with a special Apple hardware lock (just like the special hardware lock in dock connector devices)
Wanna write (and put in the App Store) and app to talk to your LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick over Bluetooth from an iPhone? You can't because the NXT doesn't have the "Apple Approved" hardware lock.
Re:Win Phone 7 - Everyone Can Laugh At It Together (Score:3, Informative)
Eh, not so much - you might want to take a look at the pie chart here [wikipedia.org]
Nokia still capture 40% of the market with Symbian.
You point still stands though I suppose. But the order is -
1. Symbian
2. RIM
3. Android
4. iOS
Re:Uhh, guys? (Score:5, Informative)
I am working with a hardware company on this. The main issue we are having is that the whole program is tailored to high-volume manufacturers; little guys like us are below the Apple radar.
To apply for the program, you need to supply a lot of information, including company turn-over and a whole lot more that should be none of their business.
Then to make it work, you must integrate a chip supplied by Apple that does the authentication. That's great if you are starting from scratch and intend to send millions of products. It's a pain if you already have a working design with thousands of devices out in the field with bluetooth, but not Apple's chip.
That's what's stopped us from signing up and doing it. Luckily, in our business, people would be buying mostly tablet devices that are exclusively used for the purpose. Android here we come, which is a shame as iOS is a much nicer platform to create something that works well and looks good in very little time.