Bluetooth Everywhere

Bluetooth 2.1 technology allows two devices near each other to communicate at a maximum speed of 3 Mb per second. In the grand scheme of wireless communication, Bluetooth is roughly two times faster than the data throughput of a 3G wireless phone but still 10 to 20 times slower than today’s Wi-Fi speeds.

More than one billion Bluetooth-enabled devices are currently on the market, and Bluetooth does a good job of transferring files that are smaller than 10 MB in size. However, due to the inherent nature of most wireless communication protocols, Bluetooth devices need to discover other Bluetooth devices, even if both devices are right next to each other. Finding a remote Bluetooth device is great, but what services does that remote Bluetooth device offer? If the remote device is a printer, does it offer the commonly used Basic Printing Profile (BPP) or the more advanced printing service known as the Hard Copy Cable Replacement Profile (HCRP)?

To find the available services on a remote Bluetooth device, you also need to search for a service. Bluetooth device-discovery and service-searching capabilities are great when you are trying to find any remote Bluetooth device in the vicinity that can suit your needs.

But device discovery and service searching are extremely time-consuming and frustrating to use when you’re trying to communicate with a device that’s right in front of you. This article shows you how to get Bluetooth applications to completely bypass the device-discovery and service-searching processes simply by using Near-Field Communication (NFC) technology and JSR 257: Contactless Communication API.

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