Google announces ‘Fast Pair’ for devices with Android Marshmallow 6.0 or later; brings ‘hassle-free’ Bluetooth pairing

Software giant Google has announced the launch of ‘Fast Pair’, a new process of pairing Bluetooth devices with Android-powered devices. ‘Fast Pair’ will ensure that users are able to connect their Bluetooth devices to Android smartphones without any hassle. [caption id=“attachment_4188429” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Image Credit: Bluetooth[/caption] The interesting thing about this technology is that it is backwards compatible and any smartphone running Android Marshmallow 6.0 or later and Google Play services 11.7 or later will be able to make use of this new technology. ‘Fast Pair’ makes discovery and pairing of the Bluetooth devices easier and Google is rolling it out for the new devices. Google pointed out in a blog post on its Android Developers Blog that users can try this with Google Pixel Buds, Libratone’s Q Adapt On-Ear and the upcoming Plantronics Voyager 8200 series wireless Bluetooth headphones. This new technology uses BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) to increase the speed and ease of paring devices while improving the security of the pairing experience. BLE is used for ‘advertising’ and ‘discovering’ a Bluetooth device while ‘classic Bluetooth’ is used for actual pairing. [caption id=“attachment_4188431” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Image credit: Google[/caption] To make it easier, Android scans for BLE broadcasts in the proximity of the smartphone to discover ‘a Fast Pair packet’. The smartphone then sends this packet to Google servers to get the product name, image and the companion app for any given Bluetooth device with support for Fast Pair. Once this is done, the smartphone prompts the user to ‘Tap to pair’ the device with the smartphone. The notification uses the product name and the product image acquired earlier because of the ‘Fast Pair packet’. The smartphone uses classic Bluetooth after the user taps on ‘Pair’ and ‘a success notification’ is sent to the smartphone along with the link to download any existing companion apps. Google thanked its partners for prototyping the technology and testing the new spec. It also called out existing Bluetooth accessory makers who would be interested in adopting ‘Fast Pair’.