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So there is no support from Android for iBeacons there are couple of libraries which intent to provide iBeacon functionality to Android. Apple iBeacon specification defines two fields major and minor which allow to send small amount of data. From Android 5.0 there is possibility to work with BLE Peripheal Mode, which allows to advertise by BLE. My question is if there is possibility to send major and minor fields by Android ?

dzakens
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Yes, this is possible. Radius Networks has a QuickBeacon app in the Play Store that transmits as an AltBeacon. This app requires a Nexus 5 or Nexus 7 2013 edition and one of the pre-release build of Android L released by Google in July and August 2014. The final release for Android 5.0 will allow configurable transmission in both the iBeacon and AltBeacon formats.

There is a catch: the first preview build of Android 5.0 released in October 2014 has broken peripheral mode, making beacon transmission impossible. The public final APIs still say this is supported, so hopefully this is just a bug that will be corrected in the final Android 5.0 update.

See here: Does BluetoothLeAdvertiser work on a Nexus 5 with Android 5.0?

Full disclosure: I am Chief Engineer at Radius Networks.

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davidgyoung
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  • Quick Beacon App gets error during installation. To advertise in iBeacon format should I follow http://glimwormbeacons.com/what-makes-an-ibeacon-an-ibeacon/ ? – dzakens Oct 30 '14 at 07:44
  • Do you have Android L installed on your phone? QuickBeacon currently only supports Android L -- not the latest Android 5.0 release from this month. – davidgyoung Oct 30 '14 at 12:06
  • That will not work. The app is only built for the earlier Android L preview release. It will eventually be re-released for Android 5.0, if the bug mentioned above is fixed. – davidgyoung Oct 31 '14 at 11:48
  • on Android 5.0 build (LRX21O; the latest ) problem seems to still exist – dzakens Nov 13 '14 at 12:17