Google kills Android's silent Bluetooth toggle
Plus: FCC weighs a UWB car sensor and a Bluetooth relay-attack warning
This Week in Bluetooth & UWB |
July 24, 2026 |
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In This Issue
→ Google ends Android auto-Bluetooth
→ Espressif ships Aliro lock SDK → Arduino lands on Nordic nRF54L → Auracast lands at Munich Airport → FCC weighs UWB car gesture sensor |
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What I'm Working On
I've been rethinking how PowerScope shows battery-life problems. An average current number hides where the energy actually goes, and you can't optimize what you can't see. The most common ask from early feedback isn't just how low the sleep floor is, it's what a given peak actually is: the watchdog, a softdevice calibration, the ADC. Unexplained current spikes are the real pain point. PowerScope already captures the full current trace on your own hardware, with a measured per-radio-event breakdown of what each Bluetooth LE event costs, not a modeled estimate. Automatically naming and attributing the non-radio spikes, so you're not left guessing, is exactly what's next on my list, along with a trustworthy before/after check when firmware changes. If you're building a battery-powered Bluetooth LE product, I'd like your feedback.
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Bluetooth LE
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Android Developers Blog
On July 20, 2026, Google posted a notice on the Android Developers Blog telling app makers that the Nearby Connections API will stop automatically switching on device radios, a default behavior change scheduled for late 2026 that moves responsibility for enabling Wi-Fi and Bluetooth onto the applications themselves and, ultimately, onto the people using them. The API previously held the ability to toggle Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios into the ON state on its own, without any explicit action from the person holding the phone.
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CNX Software
Espressif Systems has released the SDK for Aliro, designed for smart Matter door locks and other access control solutions built around ESP32-C (WiFi) or ESP32-H (Thread) microcontroller and third-party NFC chips. Aliro is a vendor-agnostic digital access control standard working over NFC, Bluetooth LE, or Bluetooth LE+UWB. It's basically the equivalent of Matter, but for smart locks, instead of the broader Smart Home ecosystem.
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CNX Software
nRF54L Arduino Core is an open-source project designed to bring Arduino support for Nordic Semiconductor nRF54L wireless SoCs, starting with Seeed Studio's XIAO nRF54L15 (Sense) and XIAO nRF54LM20A (Sense) boards, as well as compatible Holyiot nRF54L15 modules. Since the launch of the nRF52840-based Arduino Nano 33 BLE board in 2019, Nordic nRF52 wireless microcontrollers have been officially supported by the Arduino IDE.
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CNX Software
The nRF54L15 Discovery is a compact wireless devboard with an onboard nRF52820 CMSIS-DAP debugger/programmer for Bluetooth LE, Thread, Zigbee, Matter, NFC, and other 2.4 GHz IoT applications. Its snap-apart design allows the target and interface MCUs to be used as two standalone boards, following earlier nRF54L-series boards like the Seeed Studio XIAO nRF54L15, XIAO nRF54LM20A (Sense), and the nRF54L15 Connect Kit.
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Gadget Review
No smashed window. No hotwire. A thief sits in a parking lot with a laptop and two relay devices smaller than a deck of cards. Your car unlocks itself, engine ready. Two separate lines of security research, one targeting the Bluetooth stack inside infotainment systems, the other exploiting the phone-as-key feature built into millions of modern vehicles, have converged on the same conclusion: Bluetooth is the softest entry point on vehicles from Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Skoda, Tesla, and others.
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Basic Tutorials
Passengers at Munich Airport can now use Bluetooth Auracast to receive announcements directly through compatible headphones or earbuds. The public address systems provider Sittig Technologies has activated the broadcast technology at a total of six gates at Germany's second-largest airport hub, marking the second Auracast installation at a German airport.
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liamodell.com
The cinema chain Vue has confirmed 18 of its cinemas in the UK and Ireland have Bluetooth's Auracast technology enabled, which streams high-quality audio into compatible hearing aids, headphones and earbuds. Unlike standard Bluetooth "pairing," the assistive listening technology allows an unlimited number of devices to tune into a single audio source.
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EIN Presswire
On July 21, 2026, Ellisys announced a new collaboration with DEKRA that integrates Ellisys' industry-leading Bluetooth protocol analysis technology into DEKRA SolutionPRO BEST, a Bluetooth test automation platform. The combined solution enhances CCC Digital Key Certification workflows and provides automotive OEMs and suppliers with deeper visibility into Bluetooth protocol behavior during validation.
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Ultra-Wideband (UWB)
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Federal Communications Commission
Aisin states that its UWB Motion Sensors will be installed inside the ceiling and at the bottom rear of automobiles to detect human gestures and motions within two feet of the vehicle using UWB ranging. It further claims that grant of its waiver will enhance public safety by enabling reliable detection of infants left inside vehicles and mitigating the risk of serious injury or death, thus delivering substantial societal and safety benefits.
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Scientific Reports (Nature)
This paper presents a compact ultra-wideband (UWB) printed monopole antenna based on fractal cardioid geometry, designed to operate over the 4–30 GHz frequency range. The proposed antenna is intended for multi-service wireless applications, including IoT, WLAN, WiMAX, and satellite communications, while also being suitable for RF energy harvesting systems. The antenna is fabricated on a low-cost FR-4 substrate and experimentally validated.
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P.S. If you maintain a Bluetooth LE app that leans on Android's Nearby Connections API, it's worth building the enable-prompt flow before the auto-radio behavior goes away in late 2026, not after. I'd be interested to hear how others are approaching it.
— Mohammad Afaneh
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