HTCdev

Bluetooth^® Low Energy (BLE) Overview

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) was introduced as part of the Bluetooth Core Specification Version 4.0 which includes both high speed and low energy configurations as well as basic rate (BR) and enhanced data rate (EDR).

For an overview of BLE see: http://developer.bluetooth.org/TechnologyOverview/Pages/v4.aspx

BLE consists of several protocols. The Generic Attribute Profile (GATT) is built on top of the Attribute Protocol (ATT) and also referenced as GATT/ATT. Attributes, as transported by the Attribute Protocol, are formatted as Services and Characteristics. Services may contain a collection of characteristics. Characteristics contain a single value and any number of descriptors describing the characteristic value. These characteristics are grouped into categories listed was GATT profiles

Bluetooth Profiles and Services for GATT include:
http://developer.bluetooth.org/TechnologyOverview/Pages/Profiles.aspx#GATT

GATT access has been enabled since 2012 on all flagship HTC devices starting with the HTC One X+, HTC Droid DNA and the HTC One using the HTC BLE API. BR/EDR Profiles and BLE peripheral mode are not supported at this time.

Starting with Android 4.3, HTC will be supporting the standard Android 4.3 framework API for BLE. Consequently the HTC BLE API is deprecated and will not be available on devices using the standard Android 4.3 BLE API.

Best practices for migration of existing code as well as new code targeting both BLE APIs will be illustrated here in the HTC BLE and 4.3 section with code that illustrates support for both the HTC BLE API and the Android 4.3 BLE API. At runtime the corresponding available API can be detected from the same APK supporting both APIs.