Are there any actual android cell phones that implement the bluetooth spp profile

Question

Does anyone know of a current Android cell phone that actually supports the Bluetooth SPP Profile? I have spent days online trying to find one, and nowhere do I see any cell phones that say they support the SPP profile. Furthermore, I have noticed all kinds of postings where people cant get their applications to work correctly because the phone they are using does not support the SPP profile, or it has been disabled on their phone. Am I missing something here? Before I commit to developing my Bluetooth application for Android, I want to make sure it can actually be done.

I am hoping that the answer is that we implement the SPP profile via the Bluetooth API, and therefore we can use RFCOMM on any Android OS level that supports it, i.e., 2.0 or above. Is this correct?

Answer 1

SPP is RFCOMM, from the docs:

The most common type of Bluetooth socket is RFCOMM, which is the type supported by the Android APIs. RFCOMM is a connection-oriented, streaming transport over Bluetooth. It is also known as the Serial Port Profile (SPP).

So yes, any device at API level 5 (2.0) or above will support BluetoothSocket and therefore SPP.

Answer 2

@GAZ This does not appear to be true. Take the Droid Incredible S, for example, running Android 2.3. Now install an app called Bluetooth Remote Control. The app displays a list of all BT devices it finds but remarkably does not find those that advertise only SPP. I can use that same app on my Nexus S and it finds the same devices that the Incredible misses. I can only assume that it is the carrier that disabled serial Bluetooth on their phones - as a way of preventing tethering.

Since I first posted this answer I have discovered the probable cause of the failure to discover some Bluetooth devices. It appears that when the major device class is BluetoothClass.Device.Major.MISC (0), many phones simply skip this device during discovery, although I can't imagine why. If anyone has thoughts on a workaround, I would love to hear them.

Answer 3

Turns out that there is a workaround for this bug (device class 0 being skipped). Find it here: http://zornsoftware.talsit.info/blog/pairing-spp-bluetooth-devices-with-android-phones.html