Question

I’m attempting to write an app that involves connecting two android devices via bluetooth.

It is my understanding that one device acts as a server, listening for incoming connections while the other acts as the client, and initializes the connection using the server’s MAC address.

Consider the following:

I have my android phone in my pocket, I start working on my android tablet. I want to connect the tablet to the phone (via bluetooth) without taking the phone out of my pocket (I do not want to pull out the phone and manually start listening for incoming connections).

What would be a good way to achieve this? It seems like I would have to make the phone the server, constantly listening for connections 24/7. However, my gut says this will violently drain the battery.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You are right, you could make your phone (or your tablet) the server. But it ought not use that much battery; once you set up a server socket and start accepting connections the code simple blocks and waits for an incoming connection. In my experience I haven’t found this to be too much of a battery drain (but I have no hard figures to back that up).

If there is a UI involved with the server you’ll want to split out the server socket into a separate thread so as to not block UI events.