“Apple launched iOS 7.1 [yesterday] and with it a major, game-changing improvement to iBeacon,” Doug Thompson writes for BEEKn.
“Once an app is installed it will ‘look’ for beacons even if your app is shut down or you’ve rebooted your phone,” Thompson writes. “We tested the functionality today to verify the new feature. After opening an iBeacon app we hard closed it: not just putting it into the background tray but swiping it closed entirely. The phone still detected beacons and sent a message through the lock screen, something which in the past was reserved for apps that were at minimum running in the background tray. The functionality even works if you reboot your device: after you power down your phone and start it up again, it will continue listening for beacons even if you don’t open up the app again.”
“The change is significant,” Thompson writes. “The user can still opt out by turning off ‘location permission’ under settings, can turn Bluetooth off, or can delete your app entirely. But the change is a major boon to iBeacon developers – and will mean you no longer need to find fancy ways to prompt your user to keep an app in background mode.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Arline M.” for the heads up.]
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