Trouble connecting Bluetooth to Nano 33 IOT and Nano 33 BLE Sense

Hi,
I recently bought both the Nano 33 IOT and Nano 33 BLE Sense, however i cannot connect the Bluetooth with either boards using the native bluetooth connection in my phone (i.e. just using settings > connections >bluetooth).

I am using a Samsung Galaxy Note 8.

I can see the on the serial monitor (see below) it trying to connect, and always disconnecting immediately after. On my phone i see "Pairing" followed by "Couldn't pair. Check settings for this device and try again"

Serial monitor output "
BLE LED Peripheral
Connected to central: 4b:66:36:90:7e:1d
Disconnected from central: 4b:66:36:90:7e:1d
Connected to central: 51:86:56:db:ba:20
Disconnected from central: 51:86:56:db:ba:20
"

Is anybody having the same issues?

Pairing is security feature of BLE which is optional. You do not need it and it is very likely not supported by the BLE library.

Use an app like BLE scanner and just connect to your Arduino. Once connected in the app you should be able to read and write values. This depends a little bit on which exact app you are using. I am sure you can figure it out.

I like the free iPhone BLE Scanner from BluePixels Technologies.

Thanks a lot for the response Klaus_K.

The BLE Scanners are great, but just sending the digits/characters isn't great from UX point of view.
I was hoping to use something like MiT App Inventor, or something like that so at least i can build a semi nice looking app to use in the project. For those to work i need to pair the device (i think) with my phone.

Is there a workaround so i can use something like MiT App Inventor? (https://appinventor.mit.edu/)

This looks like a good page to get you started writing apps for BLE with MiT App Inventor. I do not use Android, but maybe I need to get a device to play with this. Looks interesting.

http://iot.appinventor.mit.edu/#/bluetoothle/bluetoothleintro

The entire page does uses two instances of the word pair, but in a completly different context. So I am quite certain you do not need to pair your device for this library.