The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) are the body who oversee Bluetooth developments and issue licences and certifications, and an interesting certification was granted over the weekend – Bluetooth 4.0 for design model number PN071xx_Android 4.3_G. What that string of letters and numbers means is that the HTC One (model number PN071), likely the Google Play Edition (the ‘_G’), has been certified as Bluetooth 4.0 compatible. Like the Nexus devices, the Google Play Editions of the Samsung Galaxy S 4 and the HTC One are expected to be first devices to receive updates to the next version of Android once Google pushes it out.
Once certifications like this are granted, the information becomes public, and in the interests of protecting their trade secrets, often companies will wait until just before release to apply for such certifications. In this case, that we’re overdue for a Nexus 7 refresh, the leaked Android 4.3 build for the Galaxy S 4 and now the issue of this certification, it is seeming increasingly likely that we’ll see Google go public with the next iteration of our favourite mobile OS quite soon.
Android 4.3 is expected to support the low-energy Bluetooth 4.0 specification, and the certification from the Bluetooth SIG basically confirms this. But as with any purported confirmation, until it comes out of Google, it’s still not certain.
Wish google would hurry up with 4.3