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I am in process of researching Bluetooth technology for our next project, and I have gotten a little bit confused.

Mainly I am interested in a Bluetooth connection between two devices, in best case handled by the Cordova plugin.

Bluetooth has been around for years (it's not like Wi-Fi direct...), and I would expect millions of plugins, books of documentation, etc. But unfortunately I cannot seem to find it.

What I found so far are three things:

  • Bluetooth
  • Bluetooth Low Energy (also known as BLE or Bluetooth Smart)
  • Bluetooth Serial

Bluetooth Serial seems to be connecting devices to Arduino and similar DIY projects (lower level), so I have ruled that out.

Low energy Bluetooth appears to be for connecting to simple devices such as beacons, heart rate monitors, etc. - But can it connect device to device as well?

Bluetooth itself is what I seem to crave. Dead simple device-to-device connection.

There is really just one plugin for Cordova, and that is for BLE - https://github.com/randdusing/BluetoothLE. Now it definitely seems sophisticated enough for what I need, but can it actually connect two phones?

I am baffled by how bad everything around Bluetooth is documented. Actually considering making a whole project around this just to explain everybody clearly how Bluetooth works, how to implement it, what are the different modes, etc.

I feel kind of stupid asking this question, and it would be great if anyone could take a minute to calmly explain this to me.

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BLE can be used to transfer data at very low bandwidth (~1 Mbit/s), but only between a peripheral device (e.g. a heartrate monitor) and a central device (e.g. a phone).

Android 5.0 (Lollipop) supports both BLE peripherals and central roles, but only the Nexus 6 hardware supports actually being a peripheral. I have no idea about iOS or the Cordova plugin.

So BLE isn't really an option at the moment for sending data between two phones.

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