Bluetooth

Bluetooth is a short-range, wireless technology, popular for its Personal Area Networking capability. Bluetooth hardware is provided on all iPhone platforms and the second generation iPod Touch platform. Apple has severely restricted the functions of Bluetooth to the end-user, for seemingly no reason, as the hardware supplied is capable of most if not all current bluetooth 2.0/2.1 functions.

With iPhoneOS 3.0, support for 3G internet bridging (PAN) or 'tethering' and A2DP over Bluetooth has been added, however the file sharing OBEX protocol is notably still missing.

Access

Developers have been able to successfully access and interface the Bluetooth hardware to achieve basic L2CAP, RCOMM and OBEX. Besides individual closed-apps that contain a patched version of the lwBT Bluetooth Stack (e.g. roqyGPS and the upcoming iBlueNova for OBEX), the open-source BTstack project at http://btstack.googlecode.com provides general Bluetooth support for multiple applications. Examples available in Cydia: BTstack Keyboard, BTstack Mouse, WiiMote OpenGL Demo and some of ZodTTD's emulators.

The device nodes of relevance here, are

• /dev/uart.bluetooth
• /dev/cu.bluetooth
• /dev/tty.bluetooth
• /dev/btreset

iPhone/iPods Bluetooth Hardware Summary

• iPhone (iPhone1,1) (m68ap) - Bluetooth (r) 2.0 + EDR
• iPhone 3G (iPhone1,2) (n82ap) - Bluetooth (r) 2.0 + EDR - chip specific link Bluetooth iPhone2,1
• iPhone 3GS (iPhone2,1) (n88ap) - Bluetooth (r) 2.1 + EDR - chip specific link BCM4325

• iPod Touch (iPod1,1) (n45ap) - No Bluetooth Hardware
• iPod Touch 2G (iPod2,1) (n72ap) - Bluetooth (r) 2.1 + EDR
• iPod Touch 3G (iPod3,1) - Bluetooth (r) 2.1 + EDR - chip specific link BCM4329