I've spent the last 3 weeks with my team building exactly this - contact tracing apps for both android and ios that use bluetooth tech[1]. This will probably require us to redo the app completely to fit into their API plans, but I'm glad they are, in a way, acknowledging our idea.
The troubling thing is, bluetooth-based contact tracing is in no way easy. Different android phones handle background bluetooth scanning / advertising differently and some tend to require additional config changes - such as disabling battery saving features - to even make it work.
And iOS bluetooth advertising in background is just bad. Since u can't add custom UUIDs to the advertisement package, just advertising data is often not enough, so u have to connect too, which creates a range of other problems.
I suspect they will release OS upgrades to solve some of these issues, but not all devices will be fixable (eg, older Android devices). This, combined with the fact that they will start rolling out this feature in May, makes me think it will not help us much for the latest wave of COVID-19 infections. Might come in handy for the next epidemic, though.
The troubling thing is, bluetooth-based contact tracing is in no way easy. Different android phones handle background bluetooth scanning / advertising differently and some tend to require additional config changes - such as disabling battery saving features - to even make it work. And iOS bluetooth advertising in background is just bad. Since u can't add custom UUIDs to the advertisement package, just advertising data is often not enough, so u have to connect too, which creates a range of other problems. I suspect they will release OS upgrades to solve some of these issues, but not all devices will be fixable (eg, older Android devices). This, combined with the fact that they will start rolling out this feature in May, makes me think it will not help us much for the latest wave of COVID-19 infections. Might come in handy for the next epidemic, though.
[1] - https://github.com/cryptekio/corridorapp-android