Just curious to understand why iOS devices connect to sphero directly but an app needs to do it in Android? Well that's what I guess is happening because sphero will keep flashing in identity colours in Android until an app completes a connection.
To add: to use the option that keeps the sphero alive on the charger while connected to the client, then IOS would not need an app running but Android would. Well the Android app could have a service running to keep a connection open with sphero. But ideally a consistent behaviour would be better.
Kasuku, you're correct in your post, but you also need to consider that the operating systems that you are comparing are completely different. For example, in Android it is possible to directly access the bluetooth adapter and "manually" connect to a bonded device. In iOS, this functionality is abstracted out from the developer.
To address BTLE: No, as of right now Sphero currently does not support BTLE hardware.