Compatible devices

Although Apple only released the specification for BLE devices to broadcast iBeacon signals at the end of 2013, they'd been cleverly putting Bluetooth 4.0 hardware into devices since 2011, which means that even some older devices worked immediately with iBeacon with the release of iOS 7.

The following table lists some of the iBeacon-compatible iOS devices:

Tip

Although not covered in this book, it's worth noting that Bluetooth beacons also work with Android devices that have Bluetooth 4.0 and running Android 4.3 and later, which includes some of the most popular devices (Samsung Galaxy S3/S4/S5/S4 Mini, Samsung Galaxy Note 2/3, HTC One, Google/LG Nexus 7 (2013 version)/Nexus 4/Nexus 5, and HTC Butterfly).