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Beside discovery, how about pairing? If a device isn't MFi, could an iPhone pair with it? If so, is it doable in all versions? Then what's the point of the MFi?

RLH
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Kar
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2 Answers2

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Yes you can discover - pair and in connect also as long as both the device supports the standard profiles (like HFP, A2DP, PAN etc) , to do these you dont need MFi. MFi is only needed if you want your app to talk to your accessory - which will be possible only over non standard profile (like a protocol / over the SPP profile) in which case you will have to build your device as per MFi.

Dennis Mathews
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    In addition to this, the iPhone 4S also supports communication with Bluetooth 4.0 Low Power devices through the new Core Bluetooth framework. These devices need not be in the MFi program for you to send and receive data from them within an iOS application. I assume future iOS devices will support this means of communcation, as well. – Brad Larson Dec 08 '11 at 16:06
  • @BradLarson thanks, but can you point me any Apple's documentation that saying you can use Core bluetooth framework to connect with non MFI hardware. This is just to shut my client up.. – Krishnabhadra Dec 13 '12 at 10:27
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    Well, from Apple's [Technical Q&A QA1657](http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#qa/qa1657/_index.html), *Note: Bluetooth low energy accessories do not interface with the External Accessory framework and are not required to be MFi compliant. Instead, apps use the CoreBluetooth framework to communicate with Bluetooth low energy accessories from iOS or OS X* . – Krishnabhadra Dec 13 '12 at 10:31
  • @Krishnan correct as far as BLE is concerned - The topic here is about classic Bluetooth – Dennis Mathews Dec 13 '12 at 18:36
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MFi gives you the ability to write custom code on the iPhone side, for example to write an iOS app that has some custom interactions with your device. Standard devices such as headsets can pair with iphones, and don't have to be MFi devices because they only interact using profiles that are natively supported on iphones.

TJD
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