Can iPad know when your iPhone is close by?

Question

Is there a way to create a background app( once this is available on the iPad ) that can detect when your iPhone is close by? So I'm thinking that it would require the use of bluetooth. I'm thinking you could use this for syncing and such.

Answer 1

Ignoring the aspect of backgrounding (which isn't really what you were asking about in totality):

The way this would work on a running application is that both devices would need to have the application running. Then, they would both have to register themselves through Bluetooth using Bonjour/GameKit.

With traditional bluetooth iPhone/iPad games, the game checks bluetooth and displays local bluetooth players, and then the user can select another player.

Your application would retrieve that list of local bluetooth iPhones, and compare the device name to the device name which you have determined to be your iPhone.

Here is some: GameKit Documentation.

You can do this with two actively running apps. But backgrounding these apps... of course: NDA.