Professional Android™ 2 Application Development

Chapter 13. Bluetooth, Networks, and Wi-Fi

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Managing Bluetooth devices

• Discovering remote Bluetooth devices

• Managing discovery mode

• Communicating over Bluetooth

• Monitoring Internet connectivity

• Obeying user preferences for background data transfer

• Monitoring Wi-Fi and network details

• Configuring networks and Wi-Fi configurations

• Scanning for Wi-Fi access points

In this chapter you'll continue to explore Android's low-level communications APIs by examining the Bluetooth, network, and Wi-Fi packages.

Android offers APIs to manage and monitor your Bluetooth device settings, to control discoverability, to discover nearby Bluetooth devices, and to use Bluetooth as a proximity-based peer-to-peer transport layer for your applications.

A full network and Wi-Fi package is also available. Using these APIs you can scan for hotspots, create and modify Wi-Fi configuration settings, monitor your Internet connectivity, and control and monitor Internet settings and preferences.

USING BLUETOOTH

In this section you'll learn how to interact with the local Bluetooth device and communicate with remote devices on nearby phones.

Using Bluetooth you can search for, and connect to, other devices within range. By initiating a communications link using Bluetooth Sockets you can then transmit and receive streams of data between devices from within your applications.

Note

The Bluetooth libraries have been available in Android only since Android version 2.0 (SDK API level 5). It's also important to remember ...