BLE vs Thingy
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
BLE
This utility tool assists developers in creating and maintaining Bluetooth Low Energy products. It enables connection establishment, monitoring, and configuration for RF testing of BLE devices. Log files can be shared for further analysis.
- Connect to BLE devices
- Monitor connections
- Configure connection parameters
- Start/stop test mode
- Share log files
Read full descriptionHide full description
This tool is intended to support developers in their work to develop and maintain Bluetooth Low Energy products. BleRf Test can measure the quality of an RF link in both direction for any product implementing the BLE service for RF test. Features: - establish a connection to a BLE device - monitor said connection - share log files with other smartphone apps This app is only intended to support the development of BLE devices.
Thingy
Interact with a multi-sensor IoT device to capture and view environmental data, motion, and audio. Control the device's LED, speaker, and trigger events through a user-friendly interface without needing programming skills.
- View temperature, humidity, air quality, and pressure
- Compass, step counter, and tap detection
- Accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer data
- Control RGB LED color, brightness, and mode
- Stream audio to and from the device
- Trigger programmable events
- Update device firmware
Read full descriptionHide full description
The Thingy app is designed to work with the Nordic Thingy:52™ devices. Nordic Thingy:52 is a compact, power-optimized, multi-sensor device built around the nRF52832 Bluetooth® 5 SoC from Nordic Semiconductor. Capture, view, and interact with the sensor data acquired from your Thingy, with no programming skills required. Use this app to connect your iPhone or iPad with Thingy and gain access to the following functionalities: - View the current temperature, humidity, air quality, and atmospheric pressure. - Use it as a compass, step counter, or detect taps on any of its axis. - Check the orientation of your Thingy and get live accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer data at a high rate. - Measure the gravity vector. - Trigger programmable events by pressing the button on top of the device. - Control the color, brightness, and mode of the RGB LED. - Stream PCM audio to its speaker, or play predefined notification sounds when events occur. - Stream audio from Thingy to a mobile device using the built-in microphone. - Play programmable tunes in frequency mode. - Using the free Thingy app, update the firmware on your Thingy as soon as new firmware versions are released. For firmware and mobile developers: Thingy can be flashed with your custom firmware, just like any other development kit from Nordic Semiconductor. The Thingy firmware package contains comprehensive documentation, so you can easily customize it to your own needs. Additionally, We provide a CocoaPod in Swift 5 for iOS 9.0 and above, This library is built exclusively for Thingy to ensure that installation and integration in your project are as smooth as possible! Learn more about Thingy at http://www.nordicsemi.com/thingy
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Thingy at 5.0 against BLE's 3.0. Thingy also leads on update cadence (every 3 months vs every 64 months) and iOS requirement (12.0 vs 15.0). On price, ratings volume, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Thingy holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 3.0. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 2 respectively.
BLE ships an update every 64 months, Thingy every 3 months. The most recent releases landed on October 4, 2026 and October 20, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | BLE | Thingy |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.0 (1 ratings) | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | — | 0.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 2 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 64 months | Every 3 months — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 | 12.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 80 MB | 45 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Arendi AG | Nordic Semiconductor ASA |
Customer experience
BLE
Thingy
In-app purchases
BLE
No in-app purchases
Thingy
No in-app purchases
