I've been working for a while with ibeacons and for testing purposes I bought some devices from a company back in Hong Kong for a couple of bucks each. I wish I didn't... They kinda suck, I really understand why they cost so low.
Anyway since I could not come up with anything interesting I started playing with iPhones/iPads using a mocking app I created to turn them into ibeacons, and the result was way way better than the real hong-kong beacons. I also used the Estimote app to turn iPhones in live beacons and everything was fine.
I'm asking now, if you ever bought/used Estimote beacons, is there any difference between them and an iPhone/iPad broadcasting the signal? I mean, is a mocked iDevice always better than any beacon you can purchase (say for better hardware components)? Or are just the one I purchased to be sh*t?
Thanks
A properly built beacon that meets the specifications of the beacon format will work just as well or better than an iOS device transmitting as a beacon. I have experience with dozens of different beacon vendors, so I can say this with confidence.
Dedicated hardware beacons are often configurable in ways that iOS devices transmitting as a beacon are not. With the RadBeacon line from Radius Networks (my company), you can configure:
One reason that cheap beacons are often poor quality is that they are often powered by a coin cell batter, and take shortcuts to save power. They often advertise infrequently (say at 0.2 Hz instead of the recommended minimum of 1 Hz), which causes very inaccurate distance estimates, and random entry/exit events.
It is important to note that there are also a number of options for software beacon transmitters different platforms, some of which do allow you to have lots of configurability just like hardware beacons. Locate for Android, for example, allows you all of the configuration options mentioned above.
Full Disclosure: I am Chief Engineer at Radius Networks