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fast direct communication between ios and android

at the moment I'm planning to build an cross-plattform app (iOS/android) that streams music from one device to others without internet. Now I'm considering which network technology is best for this use case. By the way I'm sorry I didn't say hello to you, it disappears all the time.
Existing wifi network:
I don't wanna use this because I want my app to work everywhere.
Wifi-Direct:
Not supported by iOS (tell me if I'm wrong).
Bluetooth:
Here I've found kind of conflicting information.
Bluetooth 2.1 is supported by both iOS and android but iOS has its own protocols and doesn't support the common ones.
Bluetooth Low Energy provides a data rate that is too slow for high quality music streaming (1Mbit) and is supported by iOS but on the android side version 4.3 is required which suspends about half of all users.
What I'm not sure about is the "normal" (not LE) usage of Bluetooth 4.0. Does anyone have experience/information about this?
Creating a wifi hotspot:
This was my first idea and probably it's the best. But there are several issue:
Some carriers do not allow hotspots
It's not possible to create a hotspot without cell reception on the iPhone and some (I don't know which exactly) android devices.
It's not possible to create a hotspot without cellular data activated on an iPhone; I don't know what about android devices (Nexus 4: no problem, SGS3 mini: cellular data can be switched off after creating the hotspot)
-> that's a problem for those who don't have an internet unlimited plan or for those who don't want to share their internet connection (as this dissipates the high speed volume) but see the next point for that.
In order that everyone can use his own cellular data connection the wifi settings can be manually edited on iOS (remove router, DNS and search domains entries). Is there a way to do so on android as well? Is there way to automize this process?
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/173894/can-i-connect-to-wifi-but-still-use-cellular
Is there any way to create a wifi network programmatically (not just enable the normal wifi hotspot)?
SDKs/Frameworks like Open Garden or Alljyon looked promising at the beginning but:
Firechat (which is made by the Open Garden team) promises that iOS and android devices can chat locally without existing network but actually it didn't work for me with an iPhone 6 and SGS3 mini. However they don't want to publish their SDK. The only information I got is that it works over wifi-direct and bluetooth. If anyone has an idea how this could work, please tell me.
Alljoyn does not provide direct communications between iOS and android without an existing network. (Tell me if I'm wrong)
API's:
iOS multipeer connectivity does not support android
I hope anyone can help me.
Regards Nils

If you are talking about a TVBOX device with Android, you will need the ethernet cable connected in order to create a hotspot.
Another option that I have done is:
Create a service that runs on iPhone with an interfaz, do whatever you want on that interfaz, then send what ever you need to a webservice, then in Android, just pull that info from another App as a service, or just store it in an internal sqlite.
Good luck

Transfer data between iOS and Android via Bluetooth?

I've been reading up on how to transfer data between iOS devices over Bluetooth using GameKit. I'm not writing a game, per se, but do have a need to transfer a small amount of binary data between two devices. Between two iOS devices, this is easy enough. However, I was wondering if it is possible to transfer data between an iOS device and an Android device via the same mechanism.
Has anyone come across documentation/tutorial that would explain how to do this? Is it even technically possible? Or has Apple put in some sort of restriction that would prevent this?
The other option I discovered was Bonjour over Bluetooth. Would this be a more suitable option for this type of operation?

This question has been asked many times on this site and the definitive answer is: NO, you can't connect an Android phone to an iPhone over Bluetooth, and YES Apple has restrictions that prevent this.
Some possible alternatives:
Bonjour over WiFi, as you mentioned. However, I couldn't find a comprehensive tutorial for it.
Some internet based sync service, like Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3. These usually have libraries for several platforms.
Direct TCP/IP communication over sockets. (How to write a small (socket) server in iOS)
Bluetooth Low Energy will be possible once the issues on the Android side are solved (Communicating between iOS and Android with Bluetooth LE)
Coolest alternative: use the Bump API. It has iOS and Android support and really easy to integrate. For small payloads this can be the most convenient solution.
Details on why you can't connect an arbitrary device to the iPhone. iOS allows only some bluetooth profiles to be used without the Made For iPhone (MFi) certification (HPF, A2DP, MAP...). The Serial Port Profile that you would require to implement the communication is bound to MFi membership. Membership to this program provides you to the MFi authentication module that has to be added to your hardware and takes care of authenticating the device towards the iPhone. Android phones don't have this module, so even though the physical connection may be possible to build up, the authentication step will fail. iPhone to iPhone communication is possible as both ends are able to authenticate themselves.

Maybe a bit delayed, but technologies have evolved since so there is certainly new info around which draws fresh light on the matter...
As iOS has yet to open up an API for WiFi Direct and Multipeer Connectivity is iOS only, I believe the best way to approach this is to use BLE, which is supported by both platforms (some better than others).
On iOS a device can act both as a BLE Central and BLE Peripheral at the same time, on Android the situation is more complex as not all devices support the BLE Peripheral state. Also the Android BLE stack is very unstable (to date).
If your use case is feature driven, I would suggest to look at Frameworks and Libraries that can achieve cross platform communication for you, without you needing to build it up from scratch.
For example: http://p2pkit.io or google nearby
Disclaimer: I work for Uepaa, developing p2pkit.io for Android and iOS.

You could use p2pkit, or the free solution it was based on: https://github.com/GitGarage. Doesn't work very well, and its a fixer-upper for sure, but its, well, free. Works for small amounts of data transfer right now.

Is iOS 7 Multipeer Connectivity compatible with Android Wi-Fi Direct?

I've been looking at iOS 7's new P2P networking framework, MultipeerConnectivity, and from the description, it seems to me that it uses a combination of some kind of Wi-Fi Direct technology and Bluetooth PANs.
Is the Wi-Fi Direct technology in this framework compatible with Android's Wi-Fi Direct? Can this framework actually be used for cross-platform P2P networking?

This is what we know:
There's no BTLE/Bluetooth 4.0 advertisement visible on my Texas Instruments Bluetooth Low energy scanner.
No WiFi Direct activity seen by JuJoDi.
Talkkr app can connect while WiFi is off and the connection takes about 10 seconds.
My working theory: the MultiPeer uses Bluetooth Classic, based on the above.
iOS Bluetooth Classic is known to be under the Apple MFA Accessory API's tight control and lockdown, including the MFA authentication challenge-response. Apple controls the MFA encryption keys (either in software or by the accessory authentication chips). It makes it inaccessible to other platforms.

The device is not found by either when advertising or browsing with MultipeerConnectivity. Tried on Galaxy Tab 2:

No, the two are not compatible.
The MultipeerConnectivity documentation you linked to explicitly states (emphasis mine):
The Multipeer Connectivity framework provides support for discovering
services provided by nearby iOS devices
Although you may be able to hack together a workaround akin to the short-lived iMessage app for Android, I wouldn't recommend it.

Based on my experimentation with iOS 7 AirDrop, it doesn't seem to be using WiFi Direct. The transfer rates are very low indicating that it may only be legacy Adhoc WiFi (capped at 11 Mbps). Did you ever read Apple claiming to support Wifi Direct explicitly? Please read my blog post for details.

I am very interested in this subject as well and I came across these rather old links
AllJoyn
AllJoyn® is a collaborative open-source software framework that makes it easy for developers to write applications that can discover nearby devices, and communicate with each other directly regardless of brands, categories, transports, and OSes without the need of the cloud Source: https://allseenalliance.org/developers/learn
OpenPeer SDK
Open Peer is an open P2P signalling protocol Source: http://openpeer.org/open-peer-sdk-for-ios/
I haven't used any of these libraries but I am interested to add them to my simple game for the fun of it.
source
Peer to peer android and iOS with Wifi direct (multipeer connectivity?)

Maybe a bit delayed, but technologies have evolved since so there is certainly new info around.
As iOS has yet to open up an API for WiFi Direct and Multipeer Connectivity is iOS only, I believe the best way to approach this is to use BLE, which is supported by both platforms (some better than others).
On iOS a device can act both as a BLE Central and BLE Peripheral at the same time, on Android the situation is more complex as not all devices support the BLE Peripheral state. Also the Android BLE stack is very unstable (to date).
If your use case is feature driven, I would suggest to look at Frameworks and Libraries that can achieve this for you, without you needing to build it up from scratch.
For example: p2pkit.io or google nearby
Disclaimer: I work for Uepaa, developing p2pkit.io for Android and iOS.

Rhomobile, BLE112 Bluetooth device - iOS and android app

I have been searching for a while now and decided to post a question here to see if someone had already traveled down this specific road.
I am developing a bluetooth enabled device, using the Bluegiga BLE112 chip. They announce this chip to be easily used with iOS devices (and this was our main reason for choosing it)
The device will need to communicate with an App, that we need to be developed for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Blackberry. Due to this need, I've decided to use Rhomobile, as it seems to be the only one that supports developing BT apps for iOS without having to develop further plugins.
I only need to send small messages (like commands, small strings) and sometimes a bigger file to the device's internal memory.
On Rhomobile's BT documentation, they state that for iOS it is only possible to comunicate between iOS devices ( i'm thinking that they say this because of the MiFi limitations imposed by Apple, but that using Bluegigas chip are not a problem...)
My question is:
Since Bluegiga's documentation has examples of devices communicating with iOS using their chip, i should be able to develop using Rhomobile and not suffer from the limitation stated above. I wanted to be as sure as possible before making my company spend money ordering the chips and development board and what not..
Has anyone tried this, is my thinking missing something?
Thank you all for your time.
Daniel

Good Question, I think I can understand the reason for your confusion.
The main reason is many people/products/frameworks does not clearly mention if they are talking about Bluetooth Classic or Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE).
These are both 2 different things and even thougfh they are called "Bluetooth" one cannot talk to the other.
(Some devices can be both Classic and Bluetooth Low Energy, which allows it to connect to either types)
Ok now comming to your Question :
THE bluegiga dongle is BLE
The Rhomobile is refering to the Bluetooth Classic version of the API.
On iOS the BLE APIs are open to applications, but Classic is limited on iOS , one way for Apps to use Classic Bluetooth on iOS is via the Gamekit APIs but that is possible only when talking with iOS devices, so it wont connect to another Android or Win device that is also Classic.
Needless to say with BLE APIs you cannot connect to calssic anyways.
The bluegiga examples are BLE examples, and apple also has good documentation and examples / samples on how to use BLE so yes it is easy to build a device and app using BLE on iOS.
There is nothing special abut any particular chip yo ucan use any BLE chip - there are many vendors today.
BUT Android (and I guess Windows as well) does not yet have BLE APIs for applications to use :( (Bit I think is is comming soon :))
So I hope this clears things up a bit.

Android tablet communicate with ARM development board via bluetooth

I am new to embedded programming and I am given a project to establish Bluetooth communication between an Android tablet and an ARM development board with Bluetooth capabilities.
Please tell me whether this project can be done or not ??
If it can be done then how should I approach it ??
Thanks

Check out this page: http://www.amarino-toolkit.net/
They are using the arduino board with a bluetooth component to connect to android. You can check the source code of their library to see how they establish and use the connection here:
http://code.google.com/p/amarino/

If what you want is a simple and robust communication method over Bluetooth then SPP is definitely the way to go.
The only issue could be the bandwidth, but if the throughput of a traditional serial cable connection is enough for your application then there certainly won't be any problems there. IIRC then most modules have > 1 Mbit throughput using SPP.
Some information about using SPP on Android is here.
But we need a little bit more information to give suggestions about what you need to do on your ARM kit. Maybe you could post a few details about its type, which Bluetooth module is in use there, how it is connected to the ARM MCU etc.
If you're lucky then your kit's BT module can function as a serial cable replacement and you can treat it as if the Android device is connected to your MCU's UART. Of course prior to that, some configuration is needed over some interface (could be the same UART, depending on module type) to establish a Bluetooth connection.
Oh and to answer your first question: yes, it certainly can be done :)

I haven't worked with Android to ARM board via bluetooth but I have done some work communicating between an Android device and an Arduino using bluetooth. I tried to document what I learned in a series of examples. There are several that might be helpful.
http://digitalhacksblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/arduino-to-android-basic-bluetooth.html
http://digitalhacksblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/arduino-to-android-turning-led-on-and.html
http://digitalhacksblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/android-example-bluetooth-simple-spp.html
The first two examples show how to setup communication via bluetooth from an Android device to an Arduino with a bluetooth board. I would expect that to get some initial connectivity between the Android and the ARM the Android side of things would be the same.
The third example shows how to setup a simple spp client and server between an Android device and a PC running windows.
Hope this helps.