Bluetooth LE Audio (BLE)

[jvbsl]

Hello there,

I wanted to know/make sure whether Fairphone 5 supports Bluetooth LE Audio.
I have a Fairphone 5 already with pre installed Android 14 (not /e/OS) Buildnumber: FP5.UT2H.B.088.20241122.

I found a short mention of it here:

Audio Stuttering at hifi quality

Hi and thanks for your detailed answer. I already changed to LDAC Codec, but the sound is still not as good as when I use the A2DP Driver with LDAC on windows. I even think that if I turn off “HD-Audio”" the audio is slightly better…or maybe its just more bass. You said that I need to turn on “Bluetooth LE”. But this option is “off” and greyed out in the dev Settings. How can I turn it on?

Also FP itself says:

The Fairphone 5 comes with Bluetooth version 5.2 + LE.

• https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/9151510762257-Connect-via-Bluetooth

while Bluetooth LE does not mean LE Audio is supported, I think it is kind of strange, because I’m pretty sure Fairphone 3 and 4 also support Bluetooth LE(notice the missing audio), but it is not mentioned at all(for Fairphone 2 it is mentioned again).
To me it is strange that is it mentioned even though it is not for the previous two and lets be honest all the phones I used in the last 12 years did have Bluetooth LE.

If I found out correctly then FP5 uses Qualcomm FastConnect 6900 for BT functionality which supports BLE audio(Qualcomm FastConnect 6900 | Integrated Mobile WiFi Chipset | Qualcomm), but that could be wrong because I got that info from a third party site.

Also I found it on multiple sites e.g.:

Das Smartphone unterstützt 5G, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2 samt LE Audio und NFC zum kontaktlosen Bezahlen.

• Fairphone 5 startet mit Updates bis 2031, 5 Jahren Garantie, OLED-Display und 50 MP "Premium-Dual-Kamera" - Notebookcheck.com News

Translation using deepl.com:

The smartphone supports 5G, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2 including LE Audio and NFC for contactless payment.

• from notebookcheck.com

Apart from all the information I found I tried it out already using “Sony Linkbuds S” as far as I could tell it did not connect using Bluetooth LE audio (unfortunately I can not test again, because they weren’t mine) but used LDAC instead. Tried the same using Google Pixel 8 and it worked like expected.

Also I found something interesting in the developer options:

As you can see “Disable Bluetooth LE Audio” is enabled(meaning Bluetooth LE Audio is actually disabled). But because the option itself is read-only(can not be set) I can not change it. As per my understanding this option would not even show up If you do not have a device which is not Bluetooth LE Audio compatible(could be wrong though). I can trick the UI by deactivating developer settings and reactivating them without leaving this setting page, then I could actually disable the “Disable Bluetooth LE Audio” option, it asks for a restart to change this setting, but as expected after a restart it is just the same.

So my question would be multifold(TL;DR):
Does the FP5 support Bluetooth LE Audio, if not is it planned to support it?
What could I do to debug this issue, would it help to get ADB Logs(but logs of which actions exactly?)

Thank you very much in Advance

[Switch]

Let me give you the final puzzle-piece for your first question:

QCM6490 5G mmWave, LTE, Bluetooth & Wi-Fi 6 combination chipset and AP...

This is the official product-page of the fairphone 5’s CPU, it tells us you’re right about the Bluetooth-chip’s. It’s using a Qualcomm FastConnect 6700 & a Qualcomm FastConnect 6900, both with BLE Audio support, according to their official product-pages (one you linked yourself),

[k3dAR]

Btw: app DevCheck show me this on FP5:

[jvbsl]

@Switch thanks that at least clarifies that the hardware should support it.
But of course software support is also needed for that(driver and L3C codec)

@k3dAR Did not know that app, unfortunately on my FP5 it also shows that there is no LE Audio support