BLE support on the mobile application side

The best support for Bluetooth Low Energy on the phone side comes from native integration with the operating system. On Android, BLE is supported through the platform API, including packages related to Bluetooth and Bluetooth LE. On iOS, the relevant framework is Core Bluetooth. These are the underlying layers that cross-platform libraries also rely on.

In practice, for many projects, we recommend Flutter as a reasonable compromise between development cost, application quality and access to native features. BLE libraries for Flutter use native implementations for Android and iOS under the hood, while the application can share a common UI and business logic layer. This usually makes it possible to build a product for two platforms faster, without writing two separate applications from scratch.

Native Android and iOS applications provide the highest level of control over Bluetooth Low Energy, especially in more complex scenarios such as background operation, custom pairing flows, advanced diagnostics or very precise error handling. The downside is higher cost, because two separate implementations need to be maintained. For products where BLE is highly critical and strongly dependent on system-level nuances, a native approach may be justified. For many MVPs and first commercial versions, however, Flutter is often the more efficient choice.

Mobile apps for Bluetooth LE devices

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PWA and Bluetooth - when it makes sense and when it does not

Bluetooth in PWA applications is possible through the Web Bluetooth API, but its product use is limited. The most important limitation is iOS. Safari on iOS does not support Web Bluetooth, and because browsers on iPhone and iPad use the WebKit engine, PWA is not a safe choice for a BLE product that needs to work on iOS.

On Android, Web Bluetooth may work in selected browsers, especially in Chrome. This means that PWA can be a good choice for service tools, demo applications, configurators used by technicians or deployments where a specific phone model and a specific browser can be defined in advance. In such a scenario, the environment can be tested and the risk can be reduced.

However, PWA should not be treated as the default choice for a consumer BLE product. Lack of support on iOS, browser limitations, lack of full control over background operation and dependency on a specific environment mean that, for most commercial products, a mobile application built with Flutter, React Native or native technologies will be a better choice.