I’m actually making some researches about beacons because we are going to use them for one of our startup. I’m reading a lot of articles to have a comparison between iBeacon and Eddystone.
I have a question regarding an article I read :
Eddystone can wake up apps on both Android and iOS. How? Eddystone can also use the iBeacon frame, which means it can leverage the ability to wake up apps on iOS just like the iBeacon. We are yet to see if Eddystone will become the industry standard, but it is worth mentioning that the support of iBeacon is decreasing, while the support of Eddystone is increasing at a rapid rate among global beacon companies. But no matter who is crowned the winner, both Android and iOS is supported.
Is this statement true ? Because nowhere on my researches I found the fact that Eddystone can use the iBeacon frame ?
Concerning our project :
Beacons will be used inside
They won’t be used to track users but to interact with them
Range is pretty important, around 30 meters would be good
The battery is our important factor in our case
I saw that estimotes beacons were configured for IBeacon by default. I’m still not sure about which protocol would fit for us knowing the fact that we will make an hybrid app and most of our users won’t be on Apple devices. Because if Estimote beacons are configured for IBeacon, it means that the battery life would be reduce if they follow IBeacon specifications right ?
I am still pretty new to beacons but I would like to give my two cents. iBeacon packages seem to be smaller than Eddystone packages so if your only concern is ranging / monitoring and battery life I would go with iBeacon. If you would like to trigger URLs on Android devices (by default) and iOS devices (if chrome is installed) I would go with Eddystone. This might also shed some light on the matter: http://blog.beaconstac.com/2016/01/ibeacon-vs-eddystone/
I think I have posted this somewhere already, but I’ll post it here as well (: My personal thinking on iBeacon & Eddystone:
When it comes to Eddystone vs iBeacon, at this moment, I’d personally still lean towards iBeacon. Its has great built-in support in iOS, and as of now, there’s no advantage to using Eddystone on Android over iBeacon—all the beacon libraries I know use the exact same Android BLE API to detect both, so the experience should be identical. There are some rumors about Google adding native Eddystone support to their Play Services, which might make Eddystone a better choice on Android then. But then of course, on iOS it’s gonna be exactly opposite: since iBeacon is built into the iOS, it’s gonna be better than Eddystone. (Where by “better” I usually mean: more responsive and/or energy efficient.)
But then there’s also Eddystone-URL and native support for it in Chrome on iOS and Android, and rumors about upcoming beacon integration in Google Maps / Google Now—probably gonna be Eddystone-exclusive, since iBeacon license technically prohibits it from being used on non-iOS systems, and I can’t imagine Google wanting to fight that.
But then (), as you noticed yourself, there’s so many more libraries/tools for iBeacon at the moment, and they are more stable, feature-complete, etc.
All in all—it’s a tough choice you need to make, after weighing in all the pros and cons At Estimote, we try to make it a little bit easier: our brand-new Location Beacons can broadcast both iBeacon and Eddystone at the same time, so if you wanted to, you could use iBeacon on iOS and Eddystone on Android and for compatibility with Google apps.
As for your other points:
yeah, “Eddystone can also use the iBeacon frame” is a weird statement, no idea what the author has actually meant
range doesn’t really depend on the packet type; think: how loud you can scream doesn’t depend on the language you scream in (:
the beacon’s battery life doesn’t really depend on the packet type; iBeacon and Eddystone frames or so comparable in size that any difference should be negligible
but keep in mind that it might make a different on the smartphone’s battery life, per what I pasted above & how iOS optimizes for iBeacon
), as you noticed yourself, there’s so many more libraries/tools for iBeacon at the moment, and they are more stable, feature-complete, etc.
At Estimote, we try to make it a little bit easier: our brand-new