Professional Android 4 Application Development, 3rd Edition

Chapter 16

Bluetooth, NFC, Networks, and Wi-Fi

What's in this Chapter?

Managing Bluetooth devices and discoverability mode

Discovering remote Bluetooth devices

Communicating over Bluetooth

Monitoring Internet connectivity

Monitoring Wi-Fi and network details

Configuring Wi-Fi and scanning for access points

Transferring data using Wi-Fi Direct

Scanning NFC tags

Transferring data using Android Beam

This chapter begins to explore Android's hardware communications APIs by examining the Bluetooth, network, Wi-Fi, and Near Field Communication (NFC) packages.

Android offers APIs to manage and monitor your Bluetooth 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. The introduction of Wi-Fi Direct offers a peer-to-peer solution for communicating between devices using Wi-Fi.

Android 2.3 (API level 9) introduced support for NFC, including the support for reading smart tags, and Android 4.0 (API level 14) added the ability to communicate with other NFC-enabled Android devices using Android Beam.

Using Bluetooth

Bluetooth is a communications protocol designed for short-range, low-bandwidth peer-to-peer communications.

Using the Bluetooth ...