Smartphone Device Support - nothingmn/AGENT.Contrib GitHub Wiki

Smartphone Device Support

  • Android 2.3 or newer
  • iPhone 4S or newer
  • Windows Phone 8 or newer
  • Heart Rate monitors - Bluetooth SPP or Bluetooth LE (GATT) is what you'll want the heart monitor to support.

Android

  1. The most recent versions of Bluetooth on Android are not super-compatible with Bluetooth LE across the board. So it's actually the Bluetooth Classic side of your phone--with Bluetooth SPP for phone-to-watch data communication--that you'll be using.
  2. If the next version of Android gets awesome standardized Bluetooth LE support...then we'll be able to switch you over on the fly :)

Windows Phone 8

  1. To confirm: we're using Bluetooth SPP (via RFCOMM) with WP8 and AGENT today. We did lots of testing with a Lumia 920.
  2. Several WP8 apps--such as the Sphero ball control apps--use Bluetooth this way on WP8 today.
  3. Here's a link to Microsoft documentation on Bluetooth support for apps with Windows Phone 8
  4. For incoming calls, Windows Phone supports the standard hands-free profile (the same profile which shows caller ID in your car). Many phones also support the phone book profile--and we can also sync contacts in the background if necessary :)
  5. Music control is a similar story--using the AVRCP (AV remote control profile).
  6. Notifications work a bit differently on WP8; there's no MAP profile and phones like my Lumia 920 tend to want to read texts aloud instead.
  7. We've pinged the folks on the Windows Phone team to see how we can make the integration experience top-notch, and we'll be focusing on providing the options which are available to us and you--and will continue tweaking and refining going forward as well.
  8. Developers can extend that even further. We're talking about apps today--but the Agent OS platform (including NETMF) is designed to support other advanced scenarios in the future. But that's a conversation for another time; today we're focused on getting these things off the assembly line and onto your wrist.
  9. Windows Phone 7 doesn't support Bluetooth for phone apps, so there's no way to load apps to the watch or communicate between watch and phone apps. It's possible that you can get caller ID and music control with Windows Phone 7, but officially for Windows Phone you'll want WP8

IPhone

  1. For iPhone 5, we're using a dual-mode radio. So apps will talk via Bluetooth LE to the watch (GATT). This includes sending notifications to the watch.
  2. iPhone does support text messages and other notifications via MAP and such. We'll do our best to provide a premium experience--and for features where iPhone doesn't shine as brightly as Android or Windows Phone, we'll try to provide you some "power tools" so that you can get the most out of your hardware while we work with Apple to enhance the smartwatch-smartphone integration experience. 
  3. As far as iOS goes, from our experience iOS lets apps talk to accessories using Bluetooth LE. Apple can change their rules at any time, but there are quite a few apps which talk to accessories today. MFI devices which use SPP...those require special interprocess comm, whitelisting, etc. We avoid that wherever possible. We want you to have the freedom to create.
  4. you'll need iPhone 4S or newer. iPhone 4 doesn't have Bluetooth LE, and Bluetooth LE is required for third-party apps to be able to communicate with the watch (without needing to be part of the Apple MFI program, be licensed, etc.). You may be able to get caller ID and music control with iPhone 4--not sure--but officially you need iPhone 4S or newer.

Blackberry

  1. Blackberry isn't on our official list, but it's something we'd love to support someday. And since we're using standards (including Bluetooth SPP) you could probably write BlackBerry apps with AGENT support on day one. Music control and caller ID may work out of the box too.
  2. We just don't want to promise anything for additional smartphone platforms right at the start. We're super-focused on delivering AGENT. If we go way over on pledges, this may be something we can bring in extra resources to address (perhaps via an Android compatibility app) to extend some Blackberry love :)
  3. For Blackberry -- we would love to find a way to support this, although it might be partial support rather than full support. Blackberry 10 uses some standard Bluetooth profiles and in theory supports an Android app. So it might just work. We really don't know, and we can't promise anything for Blackberry quite yet. We're super-focused on delivering watches and software for iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone--but we'll certainly take a look and see if we can just "plug in".